THE OTHER SIDE OF INVISIBILITY

By DixieHellcat

Have you ever felt as if you were being watched?

I’d felt it for several weeks. It generally happened at the same time and in the same place. The time was weeknights around midnight; the place, the door to my bedroom. At first I wrote it off as the usual anxiety of a woman living alone, but my intuition knew better. A discreet request got a security guard friend to cruise past my house on his way home from his night shift, at irregular intervals for a week. No Peeping Tom was apparent. I even went James Bond, borrowed an electronic scanner from the lab at the school where I teach, and swept the whole house for bugs or monitoring devices, after the proprietor of a nearby shop that sells spy gadgets suggested it.

With all the naturalistic options I could come up with ruled out, I turned my attention to what lay beyond them. No one expected a high school psychology teacher to be anything but conservative, stodgy even. Few knew I had a weekend gig reading Tarot at the local New Age bookstore. So I’m fairly well versed in the unseen too, and I started to explore the situation with a different set of tools. My house was old, but I’d never had ghost problems. Still, when a couple of famous ghost hunters lectured at the bookstore, I approached them about inspecting the place. Nothing manifested. I pondered the possibility of a demonic intrusion, but the presence, whatever it was, had never expressed threat or hostility. After turning the puzzle over a while I laughed out loud at myself. I had overlooked a marvelous gauge for matters of the spirit, sleeping right under my front porch.

Buttercup is a fiercely independent cat, and equally protective of her territory, which she deems to include me. The following night, I brought her supper into the kitchen, and explained that I needed her help. Go ahead, laugh. It worked. The calico, who normally raises unholy Cain if stuck indoors, amused herself with a scrap of old dishtowel, sacked out on a cushion while I watched a movie, and finally followed me into the bedroom. I curled up on the bed to read, feigning casual disinterest…until I felt it, that subtle but unmistakable twinge. It’s nearly impossible to describe, but everyone’s experienced it. Something, or someone, was watching me.

I started at a flump on the bed and found Buttercup pressed to my side. Her hair was bristly, but she did not hiss. Her gaze was fixed on the doorway from the living room. She hopped off the bed and padded to a spot near the threshold, where she proceeded to twist and mew, and purr even, for all the world as if winding around someone’s ankles—someone I could not see. I closed my eyes and tried to focus my sense of the presence to that point. “Who are you?” I whispered, and suddenly it was gone. Buttercup yowled and jumped into my lap, plainly as startled as I.

It would have been so easy to turn to the kitchen cupboard for comfort, but the days when I ate everything in sight at the slightest emotional upset were long gone. I would never again be a prisoner in my own flesh. Instead I stroked Butter’s fur, took several deep cleansing breaths, and strove to analyze what I had sensed in that moment I psychically confronted the silent invader of my space. The intruder was surprised, I thought; I was normally in bed at this hour so I could get to work on time the next morning, and my being awake and on the watch must have been off-putting. Surprise, yes—and fear, perhaps, at being found out? Maybe. I put Butter out with my thanks for her help, then plumped my pillows behind my back and sat. Whoever it was, this astral stalker—and I was sure now that was what I was dealing with—had to be banished. I flipped on the white noise generator beside the bed, and to the song of ocean waves I sank into meditation. Deeper and deeper my consciousness delved, until I reached the takeoff point and suddenly was soaring above my body, the bed, the house, the city, and on into a land not of the physical.

Racing through the featureless glow like a bank of luminous clouds, I looked down and sighed. Well, I didn’t exactly ‘look’ since I didn’t have eyes to do it with, and there really isn’t a ‘down’, but it’s how a mind used to a physical reality processes nonphysical experiences. Besides, it’s much easier to tell this way. Anyhow, the point I was trying to make was that I had just noticed the most annoying thing in my history of out of body experiences hadn’t changed—I still projected as a fat chick. I slowed my forward rush and set down. I had gotten past seeing the astral plane as a literal reflection of the material—newbies almost always did and ended up banging their nonexistent shins against nonexistent stuff. But me, I settled onto the spongy cloudlike surface, bounced several stories high a few times (I still love doing that), then made a stab at changing the body I and those I encountered on the astral plane saw into something closer to my current body, still not slim but definitely improved. No luck, and it was dumb to waste time on it just now anyhow. I was looking for a stalker—who, it occurred to me, might not recognize me like this. That was a good thing.

Whoever the entity was should be ‘close’ to me, close being relative and more involved with mental proximity than physical in this case. No one was near, though. I was ready to resume my search when I heard loud banging, rather like furniture being broken up. Curious, I willed myself toward the sound (okay, it wasn’t a ‘sound’ but you get the idea by now). My surroundings did not appear to change when I moved, but the action level rose significantly. A skinny boy raged here and there, hitting, kicking, and throwing things I could not see. I watched briefly, then said, “Wow, you throw an impressive hissy fit.”

He spun and glared, and I realized he wasn’t the kid I had first thought but a young man. Granted, he was the father of all geeks, with Coke bottle glasses, a mop of wild dark auburn hair and the biggest feet I’d ever seen, but he was definitely street legal and then some. “Who are you?” he demanded, “and what are you doing in my dream?”

“Oo, a major newbie,” I said and moved nearer, squinting to shift my perception and see what he saw. “This isn’t your dream, and if you keep raising that kind of ruckus someone with more power than me will come along and chuck you off this plane. So I suggest you get a grip. What’s wrong?”

He didn’t back off. “What do you mean? I’m in bed, I’m asleep, I’m dreaming. Therefore, this is my dream.”

Whoa, I thought. Not just a newbie, but totally naïve! I was close enough now to see he was trashing a dorm-looking bedroom. “Can we put this mess back the way it was, and I’ll explain?” I got no response except a suspicious glower. I picked up the nearest thing—a guitar amp? No, a karaoke machine!—tossed it into the air with intent and watched as it flew to sit primly in a corner. A ratty old brown zip-up sweater went next (not far; it fell over a chair). By the time I finished, the geek had backed up till the backs of his knees collided with the unmade bed and he sat down hard. Behind the thick glasses, his eyes were pale green and bugging out.

“You’re a—a witch or something.” His voice cracked with fear, and he screwed his eyes shut. “I need to wake up now. I’ve got to wake up!”

“It’s not that easy.” I sat down next to him, and the bed springs creaked alarmingly under fat me. “I’m sure you are in bed asleep, but you aren’t dreaming. You’re out of your physical body, on the astral plane. When you wake up, you’ll remember this as a particularly vivid dream. Have you had these before?” He stared, still looking scared, not unexpectedly if my guess was right. “Most people take years of work and training to develop the skill to project. It looks like you’re one of the rare naturals. That’s not to say every vivid dream you’ve ever had was real—but obviously this is, because I’m here, and I’m real.”

He kept staring, and finally he said, “Where did my subconscious dig up this crap?”

“Dang, you’re hard headed!” I floated up off the bed. “Whatever. I’m no astral 911.Go ahead and resume your tantrum. I’ve got a stalker to hunt.”

“A what?”

I stopped. “A stalker. You know. Like Chapman stalked Lennon?”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand. This is crazy. I never believed in this—this witchy devil stuff before. Why am I dreaming it now?”

“Ohh-kay,” I groaned. “Now I get it. You could have been having OOBEs all your life and not realize it, because you weren’t exposed to it. You’re one of those types that thinks everything psychic is demonic?”

“I grew up that way, but now I just don’t believe in any of it.” All the same, he still looked so shaken I sat back down and reached for his hand.

“It exists, and it’s not all evil. You don’t have to be afraid of it. You just need to learn to control it.” Okay, so sometimes I am an astral 911 sometimes. “So, wanna tell me what that conniption was about?”

“A girl,” he said. “Well, okay, a woman. Women don’t like being called girls, do they?”

“Depends on the female. As long as I get called, I don’t care.”

“Either way, she doesn’t know I exist.” I nodded. I’d been there many times. “What about your stalker?”

“I don’t know. I don’t sense a threat, whoever it is, but it’s still troubling.” I let go of his hand, with some effort; my fingers felt almost stuck to his. “I better go look some more.”

“Maybe I’ll dream about you again sometime,” he said as I rose. He really was hard headed.

“Have it your way. Hope you get the girl.”

“Hope you find your stalker.”

Well, I didn’t. Not that night, or any of the next ones. I’d let it go for a night or two, and then pounce, but I never caught up. I started snatching catnaps in the faculty lounge, so my personal issues wouldn’t interfere with my teaching. One day, I woke from one of those naps with a powerful sense of being watched, very like what I was experiencing at home.

I sat up and scanned the lounge. Three old hen teachers sat gossiping over coffee at the rickety table, the football coach dozed in the old recliner, and someone was leaving: I got a fleeting impression of long legs, broad shoulders, and a really nice butt. “Who was that?” I asked the coach.

“Hmph? Huh? Oh, him. The new special ed teacher. Not too friendly a fella.” Some of my girlfriends had said the young man was quite nice, if shy, and a marvel with the mainstreamed kids who often needed much more help and patience. Clearly, though, he was not the type Coach would cultivate as a beer-swilling bud.

That afternoon, I saw two people enter my classroom and stand at the back. I registered their presence but no more, as I was in the middle of an animated dismantling of Freud. By the end of the class, only one remained, the assistant principal. “Where’s your friend?” I asked her. “Hope he enjoyed the class.”

“Oh, we both did. It was most entertaining. That was the new guy, the special ed teacher. He asked me how to get to your room, said he had a professional question—probably about one of his students. He slipped out just as you were wrapping up, though. Guess he got paged or something.”

I made a mental note to find him. “Special ed,” snickered one boy as he gathered his books. “Dummy class.”

“On the short bus, ‘cause they’re short on brains,” added another.

I reached over, plucked a book from the first boy’s stack, and slammed it down on the table with a resounding thud that brought all conversation to a halt. “I hear one more word like that out of anyone, you will be doing volunteer tutoring with the special ed teacher. And while we’re at it, you’ll write a term paper on what you learn. Understood?” The boys all but cowered, but I was still angry when I got home. After a nice long shower, I tried to settle down with little success, then decided to put the pissed-off energy to good use. So I hit the astral plane late, looking for strangers. I didn’t find any, but I did spot a familiar being. “Hello!” I called and swept over to the redheaded nerd. “How’s your love life?”

He stood on the astral ground, staring around with a look of confusion that turned to relief when he saw me. “I’m lost!” he cried and reached toward me. “I can’t find anything except this cloudy stuff.”

“Congratulations!” I laughed and landed. Still fat, doggone it. “You’ve made an advance. The astral plane doesn’t have to look like the physical—only your mind makes it so. It can be any place. You can go anyplace you want to.” I caught his hands in mine. “Come on, I’ll show you. Where do you want to go?”

“Uhh…” His face screwed up in thought. “The Grand Canyon.”

“Oh, I went there with my grandparents when I was fourteen! Okay. You focus, and I’ll focus, and—bam!” There we were, on the South Rim. “See? You want to sit on the Great Wall? Anything is possible here. It’s easier if you’ve actually been there, or at least seen a picture or something, though. Like the Matrix, only better.” With a thought, we were at the very edge of the great chasm. “You even get to go where the tourists can’t.”

The weather was perfect with a mild breeze, and we sat and dangled our feet over the expanse. “You know, I’m not sure I care if you’re a dream or not,” he said. I rolled my eyes and pretended to swing at him. “Thank you…I don’t even know what to call you! I’m—“

“Don’t!” I covered his mouth with my hand. “Be circumspect, like you would be on the Internet. The plane itself regulates that, sort of—if you start to blab too much personal information you get popped back into your body. Regulars make up nicknames for each other. Like one, I call Warm Blue—that’s the projection I perceive. Don’t know if Warm Blue is male, female—heck, could be an alien for all I know.” Wow, he had soft lips, if his astral ones were any indication. “Usually we base them on some attribute, so they’re easy to remember.”

“So what would I be, Bigfoot?” He waggled one sizable foot at me.

“No, silly, nothing mean like that.” I thought a bit. “Gee,” I finally said.

“Gee what? Or is that your idea of a name?”

“Yeah. It could stand for green, like your eyes.” It could also stand for geek, but I wouldn’t say that. “And you’re—just that kind of person. Gee whiz. Aw shucks. You know.” I’d never seen an astral being blush. It was quite cute. “So what about me?”

“Rose,” he said immediately. “You’re all pretty and pink.”

Now I felt like I was blushing. “You never did say how your love life was going. Have you lit a spark with that female yet?”

His shoulders slumped. “I tried to talk to her a couple of times, but I chickened out. She’s so beautiful, and I’m such a nerd. I might as well be a shadow on the wall, for all she notices of me.” I put my arm around his shoulders and hugged him. “How about you? Any luck finding your stalker?”

“No, nothing so far.” Sitting here wasn’t helping any either, but I hated to leave my new friend so disconsolate. “C’mon.” I pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go someplace else. You lead this time. Where to?”

His focus wasn’t developed enough—for a flicker I thought I was headed straight back to my own bedroom, then we ended up back in the blank calm of the plane. “I can’t.”

“That’s okay. Baby steps. You’re getting a handle on this wild talent of yours, that’s the main thing.”

“The talent I don’t even believe I have.”

“Do you believe in the ocean?” At his frown I went on, “Doesn’t matter if you do or not. If you jump in, you’re still going to get wet, and if you go out too far you’re still going to drown. This is real, Gee. You’re a natural, and only the grace of the Mighty has kept you safe thus far. You’ll be able to do more, and take more responsibility for what you do, as you learn, but you must learn.”

His green eyes were intent on me as he listened: striking eyes, I noticed for the first time. “And you’ll teach me?”

“Well, uh…sure. I can teach you some, enough to get you started and make you safe to be on your own out here.” His answering grin was bright and warming. “Till then, promise me you’ll be careful. I’ve got to go stalker hunting.”

“Can I help?”

I shook my head. “You’re not ready,” I said at his crestfallen look, “and I still don’t know exactly who or what I’m dealing with here. Just stay safe, and I’ll see you soon. When you’re here, call me, and if I’m here I’ll hear you.”

The stalker search yielded no results that night or the nights that followed, at least not on the astral plane. More and more, though, I found the quiet young special ed teacher crossing my path at school: walking hastily down the hall as I came out of my classroom, standing somewhere I had stood moments before as if retracing my steps. He never even approached near enough for me to get a really good look at him, only impressions and flashes of height and caution and cat-quickness. When I tried to corner him, he always managed to vanish, and I began to wonder if it were he who hounded me by night and evaporated when I gave chase. A hundred times I resolved to challenge him, but my workload was large and my students my primary responsibility, and by the time things got settled each day he was gone again.

Ironically, the only person I fully confided in was Gee. Maybe I felt safe in spilling my fears to him because he was not part of the situation—he could be anywhere on earth, might not even speak the same language, since words and tongues aren’t the communication of the astral sphere. As I tutored him in the gifts he insisted he still only half accepted, friendship blossomed between us, and trust, and I shared my suspicions, in generalities only of course. It was his idea that I google my suspect (boy, that sounds nasty, doesn’t it?). No history of aberrant behavior turned up, nor involvement in the paranormal or any other level of weirdness.

“That makes me feel better,” Gee said when I told him. He was floating along doing a lazy astral backstroke through the air, with an occasional frog kick thrown in. For all his protestations of skepticism, he was a phenomenally swift learner. “Keep an eye on this jerk, though, and don’t be alone with him.”

“That won’t be a concern.” I drifted alongside him. “He doesn’t seem to want to get too near me anyhow, alone or otherwise.”

“Granted, but I know Peeping Toms can go on to try worse things.” He plopped to his feet and took my hands in his. “I’m worried for you, Rose. Why won’t you let me help you?”

“You’re not ready yet,” I insisted. “You still haven’t been able to change from that same old astral thought-body, which I assume looks pretty much like your physical one--”

“Pretty much, except for these.” He put a hand to his glasses. “I got contacts last year. And my hair’s kinda different too. But you’re in a body too,” he accused, “and you said you couldn’t change it either.”

“True,” I admitted, suddenly as embarrassed by my fat old astral self as I had ultimately become by my fat old physical self, before I changed that. I should be able to change this too. Why couldn’t I? What did that say about my own ability, my own will?

“Rose? Rose!” I felt Gee’s arms go around me, and realized my face burned and tears ran down my cheeks. “Oh, Rose, that was so mean, I’m sorry, I’d never hurt you!”

“No, you were right. Why am I pretending to teach you? I’m so ashamed.”

“Stop that, right now!” His normally cheery voice snapped with command. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.” He held me tight, and I thought I might be making more progress with him that I’d believed. Sometimes he talked as if he still thought me a creation of his imagination, but right now he was acting as if I were as real as—well, as I was. “You’re so good, and smart, and pretty…” It was such a kind lie I didn’t have the heart to call him on it. I knew how attractive the woman he pined for was; he’d told me countless times. Amazingly, he even went so far as to kiss me on my forehead. It tingled, and the tingle swept through me, making me feel for a moment as if the boundaries of my astral frame might literally melt into his. “Please forgive me, Rose.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, Gee. It’s true. I can’t change, even though I don’t look exactly like this anymore either. Maybe I haven’t internalized the change, or maybe I need to want to more. I don’t know. But I can do this!” I stepped away, and with an instant’s focus, my astral form morphed into a shimmering ball of light.

“Is that you?” Gee gulped. “Hey—you’re still pink!” Sure enough, when I observed myself, I glowed rosily. I’d never noticed it before. Was it really so, or was it because he expected it to be so? “You look like Tinkerbell.”

I giggled, then grew serious. “This is why I can’t let you help me, not right now. I think this may be how my stalker is escaping before I can pursue. This is a higher level form, and it has certain properties you couldn’t defend against in a pseudo-physical body, even as much as you’ve learned. It moves faster, too, and you couldn’t keep up in that form.” I whooshed around the immediate vicinity a few times to illustrate.

“Okay! Okay, I can do it. I know I can. Just think it and it is, right? That’s how astral things work.” Gee took a deep breath, a representation of his mental efforts to calm and focus himself. “It’s probably not going to be pink, though.”

“I wouldn’t expect so. You won’t get it right away, though. I—“

Suddenly, hovering before me was a lambent ball of red-gold flame where Gee had just stood. “Hey—hey, it worked!!” his astral voice yelped from it. “It worked! Omigosh--” He roared across the plane like a runaway meteor, then back at me at full speed, swerving just in time to whirl around me in dizzying orbit. I spun with him, caught up in his energy field, laughing in amazed delight—which became alarm when I couldn’t seem to extricate myself from that field. Gee pulled the opposite way with no more success, clearly as startled as I by this unforeseen wrinkle. Closer and closer we drew, then touched, and touched, drawn deeper into each other.

Panic and bewilderment gripped me for a moment, and then were overwhelmed by a desire so fierce in its power it made physical lust look like a child’s longing for a toy. I ceased fighting the pull, and thought I felt myself cry out as the light of our beings intermingled. Then another cry rose with mine, Gee’s, and I knew he was feeling this too, this peak of indescribable fulfillment. I knew it, because in that all-encompassing eternal instant, a part of me was him, and he me, whole, complete, one.

The climax passed, and I passed out of the sphere of his influence, at once drained and energized. “What was that?” Gee’s voice was a tremulous whisper. The ruddy gold of his light-form pulsed now with a hint of softer hue, and mine sparked with gold.

I pulled myself back into a body—still in fat chick mode. It was as unsteady as his voice. “I’m not sure…but I’ve heard about such. When you meet someone your energies are totally compatible with, you can…it’s sort of like…”

“Only better.” Gee still floated in that magnificent supernova form. “I want to do it again,” he said abruptly. “I want to do it again with you.”

“No. I don’t know anything about this—whether it affects our physical bodies. If it’s too much for them to take, and the astral connection breaks, we’d die.” At that moment, dying in that sort of ecstasy didn’t seem like the worst fate that could befall a soul.

He started to say more, and then with a pop he was back in geek form, laughing, but not his usual silly and cute laugh. This laugh sounded bitter, and angry. “This has to stop,” he said, “or else I need serious psychiatric help. I tried to get help, back when this first started, but…It’s got to stop. I can’t obsess over someone who isn’t real.”

“Gee!” I protested. “You sound like the first time we met!”

“That’s because I was right then, and I know it now. Fantasy is a fine part of life, but it isn’t life.”

“I’m not fantasy, Gee! I’m as real as that girl you’ve been lusting after for months.”

He shook his head vehemently. “I dream about her. I walk into her house, and I scream at her, I get down on my knees and reach out, but I’m not there. I’m invisible. She never sees me, never hears me…but at least when I wake up from the nightmare, I go to work and she’s there, living, breathing, flesh and blood.” Tears filled his eyes now. “Don’t you understand, Rose? You’re my perfect woman, supplied by, I don’t know, my loneliness, my need? But I can’t need you like that. What just happened—I mustn’t need you the way I do right now.”

“Damn it, you stubborn jackass, I’M REAL!!”

“No.” His voice was harsh, but he took my face in his hands and caressed my cheeks so gently. “You’re as beautiful as Tinkerbell, and as real.”

“I am so!” I couldn’t control my frustration and anger. How could he do this after what we had just experienced?

“Prove it.”

“How?”

“Meet me.”

“Where and when? You may be on the other side of the damn planet, I don’t care.” I was crying again. “Name a place and time. Just give me long enough to buy a plane ticket if need be.” For an awful moment I thought he would say no more, just go away. I put my hands over his on my face, as if some faux-physical touch could change his mind. “Please,” I begged. “Tell me where, and I’ll be there.”

When he said a name I was stunned—it was the nearest large city to me, barely a half hour’s drive away. “You know it?”

“Yes!” Then he named a restaurant. “Yes, I’ve been there. It’s across from the mall. The Jamaican chicken’s especially good.”

That seemed to rattle his pessimistic confidence, but only for a moment. "I’ll be there tomorrow night around six, with three friends. I’ll wear a blue striped shirt, khaki pants and a black leather jacket.” Again tears rose in his eyes. They were so beautiful, I wanted to pull off those glasses for a better look. How had I missed them? “This is only to satisfy me, to put you to rest. When you don’t show, maybe I won’t dream about you anymore.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I have a red leather jacket, buddy, and a white baby doll T-shirt, and jeans and some bitchin ankle boots. I will find you, and when I do I will slap the hell out of you!”

“I wish you would,” he whispered. “Oh, dear God, how I wish you would…” He lowered his head and kissed me, his lips as sweet as I’d fantasized. We were so concrete I could taste the salt of our mingled tears, yet I could also feel my astral body drawn again to his, longing to meld with it, to lose and find myself in him.

An instant later another force took hold of me, pulling us apart. It was the force of the astral itself—we’d shared too much personal information, and the plane sought to cleanse itself of the physical—it was pushing us back into our bodies—“I’ll be there, Gee. I swear I will!” I cried, and then was back in my bed. My body lay spent, limp and moist, and tears wet my face. I lay there a while and cried some more, and just about the time I felt able to move—the presence was there again, that sense of being watched. This time I was too distressed to care. “Go away, you sick bastard!” I yelled at it. “I love somebody, and I’m going to be with him. He can’t stop it, and you sure as hell can’t!”

I spent the next day in a daze. Later on I checked with some of my students, who assured me my classes were taught as well as ever. I don’t know if that’s a tribute to my ability to maintain, or a condemnation of my usual quality of teaching, but I decided to consider it the former. My last period that day was free, and I gave thought to sneaking out early. All I needed to finish was grading some papers, and I was whizzing through those when a shadow caught my eye. I looked up and saw a by now familiar figure—familiar at a distance, at any rate—standing in the doorway of my classroom. “Hi!” I said with false cheer. “How are you?”

“I’m good. And you?”

“Just fine.” I did not, of course, mention that I hadn’t slept a wink, that I had tossed and turned and ached for Gee’s touch, to experience that which I now knew was only an echo of the profound, of the transcendent joining of our true beings. “I’ve been trying to connect with you for ages. I understand you had a question for me. Something professional, psychology related?”

“I did, yes, but it’s resolved. Or resolving, rather. It’ll be settled tonight, in fact, I think.”

“That’s good..” He wasn’t bad looking actually: tall and lean, his hair a fashionably spiked strawberry blond, and a small bashful smile. I wished he’d look at me, so I could tell more. His jacket sleeves were rolled up, and he appeared to be wearing some of his students’ lunch. It spoke well of his caring for them, and I wondered if perhaps I had misjudged him. He didn’t seem the stalker type. Going out with him, if that were his interest, would be a definite improvement over fending off Coach’s lascivious advances. “I’m glad.”

“Thanks. I, uh, guess I’d better go. I’ve got somewhere I’ve got to be.” He paused. “Oh…I hear you’re seeing somebody seriously. Congratulations.”

It wasn’t until he was long gone that the import of his final words penetrated the gunk that was my brain. I raced through the deserted halls of the school to the front door, but in the parking lot no one stirred. Again, he had beaten me—but now I was sure. Only one living being could have said what he did. Only one had heard my angry shout last night.

He had just proven he was the stalker. He had just admitted it.

I completed my work and was halfway to my car when another statement he’d made hit me like a fist. The ‘problem’ he had wanted to ask me about was to be resolved tonight. Was tonight the night the stalker would no longer be content to watch from a distance? He had already approached me; that was new. Gee had warned me about even being alone with him—maybe I shouldn’t be alone tonight. I could call a girlfriend and stay over…

Gee.

The stalker’s threat shook me, but the idea of Gee waiting for a me who never came was intolerable. I had sworn I’d prove him wrong, and I meant to keep my word. The stalker could go to the astral plane, or the ninth circle of hell for all I cared. Hadn’t I told him last night that he couldn’t stop me, couldn’t keep me from Gee? I raced home, cleaned up and primped until even I conceded I looked hot, then found my way to the restaurant with minutes to spare. In the parking lot, I scanned for threats, then sat and thought out my strategy. At a table somewhere inside sat four people, probably male, probably relatively young. All those propositions were just that of course, but could be useful in steering me to my goal: one man, thin, in black leather and blue stripes. No glasses, and the hair could be anything. Most of all, I was looking for those eyes. When they looked back at me, there could be no doubt. One more look around the lot, and one more look in the mirror, and I walked in.

The place was busy but not loud. It’s usually that way, which is one reason I like it. I quietly told the hostess I was looking for a blind date and gave her a rough description. She lit up immediately, and was that a hint of envy in her look when she pointed me toward a table in the corner? My geek must clean up pretty well. Four young men sat at the table, three black and one white. The last sat with his back to the door, the leather jacket tossed over the back of his chair so I could see blue stripes on his shirtsleeves. In the dim light I couldn’t make out hair color, but the rest was enough. He wasn’t even looking for me—how cocky was he, how certain I wouldn’t show? Irked again, I strode up and tapped on his shoulder, then drew back my hand to smack the crap out of him.

He turned, and I looked into the face of my stalker, and the eyes of my soul mate.

My hand lowered to my side, as if in slow motion. “Gee?” His puzzled and slightly wary expression melted into a look of terror you’ve never seen in the best horror flick ever made. He stood up, too quickly, and his chair fell over with a thud like a clap of thunder. I stood frozen, while my brain tried to process, to make the man I feared and the man I longed for fit together. By the time my stunned body could move, he was out the door. “Oh, hell no!” I growled and shot out after him. His long legs could far outstride mine, but he stumbled as if drunk. “Stop running from me, Gee!” I yelled. I knew his name, of course, now, but that wasn’t who I was calling to.

Beside a little gray convertible, he halted and sagged against the bumper, his hands over his face. A herd of fears stampeded through my mind as I ran to catch up. Perhaps he was an astral master, playing the innocent to win my trust; no wonder then he had ‘seemed’ to learn so fast, toyed with me, laughed at me. I stopped just before I drew even with him. “I didn’t know,” he moaned softly.

Something in me fluttered, and every dark suspicion fled. “I know you didn’t.” How I knew I couldn’t have said just then, but I did. I knew, beyond doubt, as I knew my own mind and heart, that every word he said was true. “So,” I asked after a minute, “how’d you know what my house looks like inside? Your subconscious had to have a target.”

“There was an article in the school paper, not long after I came here, about the Junior Mensa group. There were pictures…” That was right. I’d forgotten about those. They were taken in my living room, from an angle where my bedroom could be seen through the door. That explained why the presence—Gee—had never come farther. “I drove past a few times, but I never saw you go out. I didn’t know which was worse, imagining you with someone, or imagining you alone and maybe lonely like me. Then I started to dream…or at least I thought so, why would I have thought any differently? But it was terrible, you never knew I was there—although your cat did once…” Buttercup had, and she had reacted with welcome and not fear. Why hadn’t I noticed that? Silence reigned, except for his ragged breaths. “And then this wonderful woman flew into my dreams, and told me they weren’t dreams, but I didn’t believe. I didn’t know it was real until right now. I would never have knowingly hurt you—or anybody—but I didn’t know it was you.” He did not look at me as he spoke.

“You didn’t hurt me. Frayed the heck out of my nerves, granted, but nothing worse.”

“Yeah, well, since I don’t think local laws cover astral stalking, an apology is the best I can do. That, and maybe now that I know what I’ve done I can put an end to all of it.”

A twinge of fear chilled me as he turned toward the door of the gray car. He might just be leaving, or he might mean something more ominous, more permanent, more unbearable to think about. “Not so fast, pal.” I dashed around him and put myself between him and the door. “We have some other things to settle. Number one, I promised you a good slap. You even said you hoped I would, remember?” Finally he lifted his eyes to mine. Good heavens, he was gorgeous: those eyes, that sensuous mouth, that lean body—he’d actually projected pretty well, if I’d been paying attention, but the anguish in his gaze now tore at me as if it were my own pain. My hand found his cheek, all right, but in a caress, not a blow. (Probably I wouldn’t have smacked him no matter what, I have to admit.) Under a hint of rough gingery stubble, his skin was silky sleek and hot. Again I felt that flutter inside me, and the touch wanted more—and it all began to make sense. “Number two, you have something of mine, and I have something of yours. When we…there’s a little of me in you now, and a little of you in me. It’s how I know you told me the truth just now. If you look in yourself you’ll find it—me—there too. You can’t walk away from that. I can’t. Besides—“ I broke off before I capped the evening by saying something really stupid. Not that I hadn’t already said plenty stupid. The more my eyes feasted on his handsome body and face, the more I suddenly felt like a fool, like the fat nobody I had always been. How could I even imagine being wanted, needed, by someone so fine, so good?

“Besides what?” I’d hoped he’d let that slide. I shook my head. “Come on, what?”

“Well, you—you said I was pretty, even when I was fat—and, I mean, I realize it wasn’t true but at least you went to the trouble to say it, to try and make me feel good, and no man ever did that…” I bit my lip, dropped my hand and tried to hold back new tears.

“Look at me, Rose!” he snapped and pulled me into his arms. “Didn’t you hear what I said after that? You are my perfect woman. You said you could tell I wasn’t lying before—can’t you tell I’m not lying now?”

Despite myself, afraid, I looked, and I knew. “Oh, Gee,” I whispered and pressed myself to him, wanting to echo with our bodies what our souls had already consummated. “We were right there beside each other all this time—why didn’t you come to me? I can’t be that intimidating!”

“I’m not unbreakable. It was safer for my heart just to dream you into my life, rather than risk being rejected.”

“Rejected?” I sputtered. “News flash, sweetie—besides being the marvelous person you are, you are hot. Half the women at the school are probably after you, and you wouldn’t have a clue if they were!” He laughed dismissively and shook his head. “Oh, do not go there with me! This works both ways. Can’t you tell I’m not lying to you?”

He began to speak, and then stopped, his lips barely parted. His eyes unfocused for a moment, looking not at this world but inside, and grew so big they seemed to consume his face. That reaction wasn’t simple agreement that he was hot, either. It was the realization, the revelation, of what I had already discovered, the bond between us that I was sure would never be broken. “Yes,” he gasped. “Oh, my…” His arms tightened around me, and I felt a fine tremor course through him. “If you only knew how many times I watched you, and wished I knew what was going through your head!”

“It’s not quite that, but it might grow to be, in time.” In time. Boy, I liked the sound of that. “It looks like we both have the same problem—we changed the way we look to others, but we forgot to change the way we looked at ourselves. Maybe that’s why our astral forms won’t change.”

“If that’s the problem, I have the solution. I will tell you how beautiful you are a dozen times a day for the rest of my life, if you’ll put up with me.”

“Likewise.” I returned just before he kissed me. The next time I went to the astral plane, I suspected my self-projection might be very different, with him beside me; and I planned for the same to go for him. We stood and held each other, and then I whispered a word in his ear: his name. “I still like Gee, though.”

He laughed—finally that bright reckless laugh—and what he murmured in reply sent shivers of pleasure up my spine. My name, that old thing on my drivers license and the house deed and all those necessary pieces of paper the material world demands, sounded so fresh and new from his mouth. “Only when absolutely needed. The rest of the time it’s Rose. My sweet, sweet Rose…Or Tinkerbell.” I giggled. “I guess I really did have to believe in you before I could see you, didn’t I?”

“I guess so.” I rested my head against his shoulder, so unimaginably content, so eager to get about the business of this suddenly joy-filled life. “Don’t ever stop believing in me, Gee. I won’t stop believing in you.”

“Never will,” he said, and knowing it was true made it all complete.

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Posted 09.22.04

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