Lover's Moonlight by Brian Hesse (epub read online books txt) 📕

To the practical eye, the love between Blake Tyler and Kim Ellison, is nothing more than a clever combination of chemicals in the brain; natures natural drug cocktail signaling a perfect match for the continuation of the species. To the more poetic eye, their love is a beautiful tragedy in the making, worthy of Shakespeare’s succulent pen. To the rest of us mere mortals, gazing at the star filled nighttime sky, feeling lonely for something too obscure to accurately articulate, their love is a story of hope-hope that, one day, we can also find that one true love, regardless of the chaotic static that creeps into our mundane daily lives. For what could be more exhilarating than finding that one person in whose embrace we find refuge from every unthinkable horror, every unrelenting storm, and every lonely moment as we inevitably hear the heavy footsteps of death, signaling that our blink of an eye existence is at its end. Blake and Kim believed, deep in their hearts, in this kind of love, but as so often is the case, both lovers find themselves swept away by that careless impartial hand of fate. Like a spoiled child burning ants with a magnifying glass, fate randomly intervenes, and carelessly turns our lives upside down.

Girl, Does He Even Know?

 Tonya turned to Kim, as both girls waited for their next customer with numbed indifference, and asked, “girl, does he even know what you do for your money?”

   Kim turned to Tonya and replied, “no, he doesn’t, and he never will because I am done after tonight.”

  Both women heard thunder shout somewhere above the dark midnight sky, lightly illuminated by the few street lights of Washington Boulevard. A light rain began to fall as, both women instinctively know, is just a prelude to a torrential downpour. The city’s prostitutes were, as is only logical, the shrewdest observers of weather patterns. A heavy snow or rain could mean the difference between making a fortune or, going home with an empty purse or, in the case of the many male prostitutes, empty pockets.

   “You would think that the rain would bring out the Johns,” stated Kim, trying to change the subject. Blake Tyler, to her, was a prince worthy of a woman with a normal career. Each time she thought of him, with his perfect crooked smile, short cropped dirty blonde hair, and soft skin stretched tightly against strong, but not massive muscle mass, she felt mixed emotions churning inside her, like a raging ocean smashing against rocks and violently changing direction. On one hand, she felt giddy virgin all over again. His touch was like no other, she considered, as she closed her eyes and remembered their first night together. His touch was masculine but soft, as if she were made of the finest porcelain, and could break under his touch. After, what seemed a lifetime on the street, although it has only been five years, a soft manly touch was just what the doctor ordered for a soul that, she sometimes felt, was dying under the dim lights of Philadelphia.

  She was quickly snapped back to reality by Tonya’s high-pitched voice, “always the hopeless romantic. You’re the only working girl I know who could complain about the lack of Johns and rainy night romance, all in one breath.”

  “It wasn’t always that way. I just about given up on love,” She looked up at the night sky and felt the cool rain pour across her face in streams of, what felt to her, as a cleansing of all her sins. She continued, “you know my story. The same sad common tale of a girl hated by her parents. A girl turning to drugs, dropping out of school, and running away to the streets, hoping to find a place in life.”

   Tonya interjected, “hope is a killer girl.”

  “Yea, maybe, but I have hope that I can wipe off the filth of the street, and make a new life with Blake. I’m only twenty-one, plenty of time to make babies, and raise a family.”

   Tonya laughed loudly and looked at Kim’s eyes. She could see the hurt she caused with her outburst. “I’m sorry baby, come here.” Tonya wrapped her arms around her, and whispered in her ear, “I believe in you, but you know you’re going to have to come clean, and tell him the truth.”

    Kim considered this truth with a familiar anxiety, as both friends stood on the lonely corner of Washington Boulevard, and South Fifteenth Street, waiting for their next fare.

The Girl of My Dreams

  Blake stared at the blank screen of his Dell laptop in the darkened room of his three-bedroom apartment. The white glow of the computer’s screen glared mockingly at him, as he struggled to produce the most important part of any book, the dreaded first paragraph. He was grateful to have sold his first novel just one year ago, to the day. Not a bad accomplishment for a twenty-four-old struggling writer, with a mound of student debt, he thought.

    “Well, no time to rest on my own laurels,” he stated out loud to the glowing monster in front of him.

   He thought of Kim, and the words just began to flow from his mind, like a raging water of words and clever phrases, breaking through a wall of concrete and cinder. He considered what he ever did good with his life to deserve such a wonderful woman as Kim. He thought about her blonde hair, and how it looked when it rained, pressed close to her small round face. A face, that he believed, broke the mold of beauty after it was carefully crafted from above. He was never a religious man, but Kim was his angel, and his inspiration.

   He continued to tap away on the computer’s keyboard as if on auto pilot. Unaware of what he was writing, he thought about the night they met. He was amid yet another writing crisis that night. The tall bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey looked inviting, sitting on the fake fireplace mantle beside his writing desk, but he knew full well that this was not a good solution to writer’s block. He decided to take a little midnight stroll to the South Street café, looking for some city inspiration. He always preferred the city over country life. Something about all the noise that brings out the words, he would always say to his few friends in the world.

  He remembered the nervous feeling that griped his stomach, like vice grips clamping tightly against a piece of steel, when he saw Kim, sitting alone in one of the back booths.

  “Can I sit, and buy you a coffee?”

 He did not know that Kim was a prostitute. She was not working that night, so she was dressed in clean tan slacks, and a clean teal blouse, borrowed from her roommate.

  “Sure, do what you like. Just don’t be a weirdo, or I will mace you quicker than shit.”

  He sat looking at what he wrote on the menacing screen so far. He was pleased with the art he just produced, particularly since he has no recollection of writing anything at all. His thoughts were lost on that night, when he was thunderstruck by a trash talking beauty in a lonely grease stained café.

  Just as he cracked his knuckles, a habit he just could not break, and positioned his fingers to continue his latest romance masterpiece, the cell phone vibrated noisily against the cherry wood of his writing desk.

  “Hey babe, you coming over tonight?”

  “We need to talk in private. Let’s meet at the old cemetery. You know the place.”

  He did know the place. On their third date, Kim drove them to the Parks Cemetery, just off highway sixty-one, twenty miles from the city. He closed his eyes as a large smile crossed his face. His anxiety quickly turned to an excitement he never felt, as they made love among the grave stones of the dead on a moon filled sultry night.

    “Ok, babe, I will meet you there at midnight.” Midnight was their secret hour. Some lovers have songs, movies, or even books as reminders of their passion. They had time as their aphrodisiac. Midnight, was the hour when the love making among the dead began.

   “It’s so good to be alive,” he stated to the dark room, as he shut off his computer, and happily walked out his apartment door.

I Have a Secret

“Hey sweetheart, I’ve been thinking about you the whole night,” stated Blake, as he hugged her tightly under the bright moon hanging over the horizon.

  He felt anxiety surge through his smooth frame as he felt the tension radiating from her warm body.

 “What the matter lover,” he asked, with a bright smile that, as she observed, matched beautifully with the uncharacteristic brightness of the moon.

  “Listen, I have something to tell you before we go any further,” she stated, directing her gaze to the soft dirt of a recently covered grave.

  “Babe, there is nothing that you can’t tell me. I love you more than life itself.”

  Kim looked at him and felt her courage slip away under his naïve, gorgeous, hopeful gaze. She thought to herself, just end this. I can’t tell him the truth about me. He deserves better than I can ever be.

  “I want you out of my life. Go do your writing thing. Just leave me in peace. You’re like a pathetic dog, always following me around. Fuck off creep.”

    Kim ran to her car and raced away into the night, leaving a stunned Blake to feel the agony of a shattered heart.

The Beauty of Fate

 Kim ran into her one-bedroom shared efficiency apartment and locked the door. Her roommate was out working that night, and she had the room to herself, a personal dungeon to torture herself with regret and self-hatred. As tears poured from her eyes in rivers of sorrow for the death of what might have been, she swallowed pills, and finished off as much emotion numbing liquor as she could consume.

 Twenty miles away, Blake raced through the dark country roads at ninety miles an hour. His emotions rapidly fluctuated between bling rage and bottomless sorrow, but each emotion producing the same result, tears that blocked his vision, and carelessness that murdered every instinct of self-preservation. For when hope dies, the soul dies, and when the soul dies, the body is sure to follow. He closed his eyes tightly in a vain effort to empty his eyes of his pooling tears, like wringing a sopping mop dry. He felt the steering wheel of the car jerk to the right, as if an invisible hand decided which direction he should go. He opened his eyes just in time to see the telephone poll rip through the front hood of his car, like a hot knife cutting through cool butter. The last sensation he felt was the sharp shards of glass slice through the soft skin of his face.

Undo the Past

 Kim woke up in, what seemed to her, just a few short minutes of unconsciousness. She felt a violent thumping inside of her head, like a hammer knocking in rhythm against the inside of her forehead. She looked around the apartment at the empty pill bottle and bone-dry bottle of scotch, as a deep feeling of regret warmed her chest. She felt like a coward for what she had done at the cemetery. The guilt played heavy on her as she considered how she must have broken his heart. She empathized with this feeling because her own heart was broken by her cowardly carelessness. She reached for her cell phone, and felt rage as, no signal, flashed across the blue screen.

  “I’m sorry