The Unseen Suzanne

Suzanne was awakened by the 6:00 a.m. rumbling trash truck banging it’s gigantic refuse bin which was already filled with its obnoxious odors. The driver was uncaring and oblivious of the semi-sleeping occupants of the condo apartments looking over those lonely parking spaces. Wide open spaces with nothing to protect the property parked there from the untrained drivers, the senior moment tenants, or the refuse company’s non-responsibility clauses. The cracked foundation walls held the memories of those past displays of other driver’s ineptness.

All the noise and the aromas did not put her into a ready for work mood. But after a brief peek out of her eyes, her sleepy headed brain saw that there was something very disturbing about the appearance of her bedroom; and there was these weird looking bright pink pjs barely covering her dainty unmentionables.

The room was totally bizarre to her, as she rubbed her eyes again and took another look around very cautiously. Her unfocused eyes only saw foreign faces staring out of picture frames, strange artwork on the wall, the hideous pink polka dots on the bedspread comforter, and some dumb looking pink panther slippers peeking out from under the bed. There were too many fluffy purple pillows crowding her space on the wide berth bed and a very unusual plastic low hanging light fixture dangling too close to head, as she stretched to even sit up a little bit.

Then there were strange sounds coming from an undulating oblong silver plaque-like piece of silver with flashing lights as it danced across the dresser as if possessed by a poltergeist. Suzanne tried to remember anything she could.... was she still dreaming, where was she last night, had she been drinking or maybe something was slipped into her drink, and what time was it now? She didn‘t remember or recall anything. There was a brain silence to all those inquiries.

She couldn’t find a clue in the spacious room, and as she delicately pushed back the lacy curtains; there was a totally surprisingly, unfamiliar view of a vigorous ocean pounding the seashore. The ocean give her no solace as it pushed in its stubborn waves back and forth with no resistance to its undetermined and undisclosed secret paths through the ocean depths.

Suzanne stared and began to feel panic, no; actually fear about the option that her mind must be the one playing some cruel and pointless trick or joke. It wasn’t amusing at this point. Could she actually be having a nervous breakdown, some mental weakness, or foreboding hints of insanity?

Moving towards the picture frames that had been placed previously in a neat row, but were now scattered hither and yon by the skittering poltergeist plaque, she decided to re-set the rows. As she straightened each one back to some semblance of order, she realized that there on the dresser sat a pair of glasses. I don’t wear glasses ! Whose glasses are these with big round owl size lenses and brown speckled frames?

But they fit her perfectly, as she gingerly picked them up; just in case, they too had some evil spirit possession or other mission. With a clearer view now of the photos, she is squinting anyway to try to coax a vague memory or recollection from her totally baffled brain.

Who are these people? Why am I here? What is going on?

As she opened the dresser drawer to see if she could find even a cryptic clue as to this mysterious morning’s confusion. There were only strange colors of clothing that she had no recollection of purchasing. By now, the glorious sun began to shine her blanket of brilliance around this unnerving environment, but all Suzanne could do was keep shaking her clouded and bewildered head.

Please get me out of this dreadful dream or nightmare!!

“I am awake!”, she exclaimed out loud to no one there.

The second drawer then revealed an ominous gun, which she quickly withdrew her hand from. There were blue sleeping pills and a well-worn wallet that probably belonged to that ugly pink purse lying next to it. There in the dirty brown wallet was a picture on a driver‘s license of someone much older than Suzanne where the date read 2003, and the woman’s grey hairs were peering out of the canvas floppy hat above the wrinkles that crinkled around her cheeks.

The photo image revealed a tan, healthy version of someone who vaguely reminded her of her mother. But that couldn’t be her mother; because she had passed away, or maybe she hadn’t. Suzanne couldn’t remember. She now tried to see if there was something to let her know what year it was.

“Am I the female version in the 100 years sleep of Mr. Rip Van Winkle?” she mused in a whisper.

She took more notice of the room, searching for a daily newspaper, a photo magazine, a calendar, or a TV set in a cabinet. Nothing was there, the room

had been sanitized of its paper goods from their wooden roots as if to ban their permission to be there.

There was a strange black picture with a black frame hanging on the wall directly opposite of the oversized polka-dotted covered mattress. Huge and black with a blank canvas was a painting or screen completely devoid of colors.

What else is happening here?, she thought. She looked frantically for a telephone. None in sight, but there was that skittering plaque sliding around again with a different and unfamiliar beat, but with more intensity than the previously gentle harmonies that had awakened her earlier.

I think I am going to be late. She got dressed and was amazed to notice the clothes were slightly lesser and more free flowing apparently to conceal an expanding hip line. Looking down at her figure only to inspect what could have happened to her physically, she noted some very unsightly terrain from her shoulders down to those hips.

Enough time wasted on the sight-seeing tour, her work partners were not going to accept any of these excuses. Working at a large corporation, she usually dressed in a suit.

How did she know that? Or did she only invent that to calm herself.

She grabbed the key to the condo, the ugly bag, and her mind was racing once again. The key had the number stamped #57 on it, and as she locked the condo door she didn’t know which way to exit the floor.

As she finally found the elevator and went to the parking area; her only thought was find #57. There in space # 57 was a silver car with the letters BMW on its rear trunk.

What did those letters mean? She hadn’t seen any other tenants, as she had ventured down to the structure; but one lady had nodded her head as if to say good morning. Where are the keys to this limo looking vehicle? Digging into the pink patchwork bag, she jumped at the sound of an extremely loud beeping apparently coming from that BMW.

What had happened, what had she done? The black key fob that she had found in the purse did have mini pictures on it, so she frantically pushed those buttons until the noisy beast stopped. As she slide into the driver’s seat, there was her next challenge. Some many button, levers, gauges, that it so confused her in her frustration she got back out and decided she could walk to work. Surely, she could remember where that was.

Walking towards the busy intersection to see where she could cross safely, she was unsure of where she was and what to do next. In her daze, she was hearing a voice calling her name from a car which had stopped, and a chorus of cars that were impatiently honking away at the female

driver.

Georgina: Suzanne, what are you doing out here? I have been looking all over for you. You didn’t answer your door, you didn’t pick up your phone, and you weren't the parking structure when I got here.

Suzanne woke up from that dream once again. She had it for about a week now, but she wasn’t even sure that was right either.

Going to work at her computer, her client’s name had totally left her consciousness, even though she had just looked on her daily calendar to start her day. Her computer was locked, and now she didn’t know the password. More scenes of frustrations as parts of the dream seemed to be coming true.

Her mind strained to focus, she started shaking her head several times as if that could adjust her brainwaves. It only made it worse, because more of the unfamiliar scenes came forward, and never revealing answers to the questions.

If I could only stop these imaginary visions from clouding my concentration and figure out where my memory bank deposits from the past have gone.

Suzanne decided that she needed to ask a friend for help. It could only be Georgina, because she would be discreet and not let it slip at the lunchtime gossiping sessions. Suzanne was so irritable and fearful that she was going straight to a nervous breakdown.

There was so many things in her mother’s room she had not investigated. So that evening she searched through those dusty boxes, hoping her answers were hidden there in the family secret treasures. There it is was: a journal diary.

Adeline, her mother, wrote about the family secrets but in codes. She wrote about protecting the family from rumors and ridicule. She pondered why physical ailments were acceptable, but not the mental ones. She told of the horror stories that her mother, Virginia, had scared her with. Virginia knew about crazy people locked in cells, no visitors allowed, electric wires and shocks, drugging with pills, and beatings when they threatened to runaway or tell someone.

Those threats felt very real as Suzanne read the pages, and she began to cry. The cryptic words: hippocampus, occipital lobe, and the parietal lobe melted into the ink.

What did those words mean? Why didn’t Adeline explain them there in the journal? More secrets. Suzanne was getting hints and peeks into those locked up words and unspoken consequences.

Adeline continued speaking of Suzanne’s Grandmother Virginia and her visions of the future and how she was labelled crazy. The saga in the pages, so it seemed was that Adeline was fearfully writing about her secret brain operation that was done when her husband was in the military. Not with a military physician but a private doctor who was not working from a hospital; but rather in a back alley room unattended by anyone else.

Suzanne was so shocked, she could hardly breathe. My mother could have died, and I inherited all of this. My grandmother‘s futuristic visions and my mother’s lack of memories and why she had decided to write this beautiful and terrifying family secret diary.

Even after the operation, Adeline still suffered from those memory loss symptoms, but now Suzanne knew she could go forward with less fear. Those words were the keys to her unseen powers and those of her female ancestor’s DNA. Suzanne could now finally see herself and could accept those future gifts of insight with gratitude.