Part 1: The Strangeness of Fredrick Street - Chapter Seven

In Chapter Seven, a routine day turns into a nightmare for Sarah. Are those her memories? Who placed this order?

7

With the school run over and done with, Sarah's day opened up ahead of her like a California highway (or at least the way she pictured it due to the movies), but without the relative freedom that journey provides. She had much more menial tasks causing her a pit stop every half hour or so on her imaginary road trip down the coast. Driving into town, her To Do list for the day pinned to the dashboard in front of her, Dry Cleaners, Doctors, Butchers and Snacks - not listed in order of importance. Sarah permitted herself a few moments to bask in the intermittent silence afforded the car now that she'd dropped off the kids before the basking would turn to wallowing in the quiet and eventually the surge of guilt that she was enjoying a few moments alone of peace and quiet without the kids or her husband. Sarah was a creature of habit, who liked the idea of alone time more than actually being alone from her loved ones and whenever she was left in silence for too long her mind began to spiral, attempting to open doors to doomsday thinking. Quickly (trained in the art of quick distraction) she flicked on the radio and let the songs of the day fill the sullen and silent atmosphere of the car and push her thoughts of loneliness from her mind. 

Now that she'd planned the day, she was looking forward to the night's event more than she had been that morning. Maybe it was just over-exhaustion, her mental faculties and positive attitude run down with the lack of sleep and busy lifestyle. Despite her commitment to the early morning rise and run, she had found herself of recent nights tossing and turning, waking from strange dreams, the odd disturbing one, that ranged from round rooms, drowning in a tank of water and one particularly horrible nightmare wherein she seemed to be catching sight of her reflection in the bottom of glasses and in bar windows – the reflection a haggard, skeleton thin woman with skin the color of yellow pastel. It was perhaps this particular nightmare that made her push even further into her early morning routine and commitment to her self imposed healthy eating programme – the fear of becoming that woman gripped her all too strong. Although why the fear felt so prescient, she didn't know. She had no cause to worry that she was on that path or indeed ever had been. She never drank. She didn't do drugs. She didn't even eat fast food. But no matter how many times she told herself this, reassured herself about how fit and healthy she was, she couldn't shake that image she saw when she closed her eyes. And to make this fear even worse, the strangest thing had happened the day before which she had pushed to the back of her mind until now. 

Coming back from her morning run, there was a large delivery truck parked outside her house. Jogging toward the driver, leaning against the wheel wearing a fedora and a duster jacket (in this impossible heat no less), she unplugged her earphones and waited as he pushed himself away from the truck and moved toward her, breaking into a smile and taking off the hat. If it hadn't been for the slightly greying hair she would have sworn it was Idris Elba straight off the set of filming The Dark Tower (a fact she only knew because her son was such a huge fan of both King and Elba) complete with Gunslinger costume. He had a friendly face, startling blue eyes looking out from his dark skin. He took his hat off and checked his clipboard, still with that smile. 

"Sarah Barr?" he said, looking up at her from his clipboard. 

"That's me. What's all this?" Sarah asked, taking a swig of her water. 

"Looks to me like one hell of a party is what it is," he said, taking out a pen and passing over the clipboard. "Just give me a signature here and here and I'll get unloading all this party juice."

Sarah didn't take the pen, instead looked past him into the truck, confused. "Party juice?"

"My little word for it. Booze. Drink. Moonshine. You must be having the whole neighbourhood round."

Her heart had started to race, (which she accounted to the run) but nevertheless she started to feel a little woozy. "I didn't order any alcohol."

The man looked at her, taken aback. "You didn't?"

"I didn't. I don't drink. And the people coming to the party bring their own if they're so inclined."

The man scratched his head, looking back at the clipboard. "You are Sarah Barr though, right?"

"I am but I'm not the right one you're looking for."

He glanced back and forth at the clipboard and Sarah a couple of times and clicked his tongue. "Must be a mix up at the warehouse again. Mrs. Barr, I've very sorry to have troubled you with all this. I'll head back and find out what's what."

"It's alright. These things happen. I'm sure I'm not the only Sarah Barr."

He smiled wide then, in a way that made her a little uncomfortable. "I'm sure you aren't." He then leaned in conspiratorially. "You want one off the back of the truck? Nobody's going to miss one, see it as a token for all this inconvenience."

Stepping back a little, Sarah shook her head. "I'm fine honestly. Unless it's water you have back there, I'm not interested."

The man nodded and flipped his hat back on. "Right you are. You're a good woman Mrs. Barr. Apologies again."

And with that, he hopped back in his truck and drove off, leaving Sarah standing there, confused as all hell. It had been the strangest thing, the delivery turning up like that, right after those dreams had started. And even stranger was how thirsty she felt looking into the back of that truck, a thirst that, no matter how much water she drank couldn't quite be quenched. 

Her dream-like reverie on her nights of broken sleeps, the jaundiced food deprived version of her in the mirror & her weird moment with the delivery driver was interrupted slowly by the sound coming from the radio. As she pulled into the next lane and stopped at the red light, Sarah looked toward the speakers of the car and listened. Something about the song, the lyrics, stirred her into a hypnotic state. 

Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen. She'd been a fan in her youth. Had even cried when Freddie died.

All of a sudden, like a switch was flicked, images begun to flash through Sarah's mind, quick and violent, pulsing to the front of her brain and into the minds eye. Empty bottles. Syringes. Music loud. Powder on the table. A room full of pallid and paper-thin people. Cars. Traffic. An accident.

MMMMEEEEEHHHH.

Snapping out of her hypnosis, Sarah's mind rushed back to the present to the sound of pamping cars and angry drivers behind her. 

Driving quickly through the green light she'd been sitting idle at while the cars behind got angrier and angrier, she pulled over into the shopping centre car park and stopped the car, her breathing a little ragged and heart beating a touch too fast for someone who was only sitting in a car. What was that? She thought. She sat there for a few moments, wracking her brain as to what just happened inside her head. It was like scenes from a thousand broken movies, a film edit that was cut badly and jumped in places. Images, and scenes, playing in her mind like a memory. But from where? And who's? They're not my memories, she told herself, adamant. But was that true? The only way she could think to describe the experience was that it was like she was sitting down to watch a movie for the first time but as the opening credits started to roll, she realized she had already seen it. The empty bottles? Sarah didn't drink. And the syringes? She grimaced at the thought of a few painkillers and couldn't even bear to take a nasal spray, so why was she suddenly seeing scenes of excessive drug use in her head? And the accident, or whatever that was at the end. She had never had so much a parking ticket never mind being involved in any accident involving a motor vehicle. The whole thing happened so quickly and was so strange she couldn't wrap her head around it. One minute she had been sitting there, quite the thing thinking about the day ahead, about missing her kids and listening to a Queen classic. Then all of a sudden, it was like she was thrust into somebody else's mind to take an unwanted and unheeded trip down a particularly dark side street of memory lane. It made no sense to her. No whatsoever. 

Giving herself a quick glance in the mirror, Sarah touched her face. Healthy. Tanned. Just as it was supposed to be. Perhaps she was just fatigued. And, come to think of it, perhaps she'd not drank nearly enough water since her run that morning. Those two things combined with the fact she was filling her non-sleeping time with watching the 2am movies on the TV probably was filling her head with all sorts of images and her brain just was getting to sluggish about separating what was the truth from reality. She'd read about that in plenty of articles online about sleep deprivation and dehydration. That's itshe thought. That's the reason. No need to panic or run to Dr. Wyatt...no wait Fleming. She didn't have a Dr. Wyatt.

Popping open the glove compartment, Sarah took out a bottle of water and started to drink, trying to push that little wobble out of her mind. She was satisfied with her self-diagnosis and non-googled answers that she chalked it down to something that was nothing worth worrying about. She just needed more sleep and more water in her system. Nothing more. Nothing less. Stepping out of the car to the packed shopping centre car park, Sarah looked and saw that she was, somehow one of the lucky few to get a space so close to the door, despite the mid morning rush and the packed car park. Picking up her shopping list and locking the car, she headed toward the shopping centre, thinking no more of the images she saw and no more about the opening to that Queen classic that had started it all in the first place. She had a party to prepare for after all. 

Part 1: The Strangeness of Fredrick Street - Chapter Six

In Chapter Six, life begins to unravel on Fredrick Street, with Kim experiencing something strange.

6

The high pitched drone of the dishwasher as it finished it's cleaning cycle nudged Kim out of her mid-morning nap; a treat she'd grew accustomed to since falling pregnant. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she sifted through the pile of scripts on the coffee table for her phone to check the time. It was reading the scripts that had put her to sleep in the first place, the majority of them B-Movie slush that made Plan 9 From Outer Space look like Schindler's List in comparison. She didn't mind that she wasn't necessarily an A-List star strolling up red carpets with flashing lights and adoring fans. It was work and it paid the bills. But, with motherhood beckoning, she felt it was high time she made her way closer into the big leagues. Perhaps the wisdom, the inevitable adornment of crows feet and a few wrinkles that would be a result of impending motherhood could elevate her from straight to DVD-fare to more cinematic outings. Most mother's wailed about how their babies took away their youth, their looks and their figure but Kim was hoping that it'd take away from her almost Barbie doll sculpted features and let her get taken as a serious dramatic actor. She'd never tell the rest of the mothers this though; she liked them and liked that they liked her, which wasn't easy for Kim. She'd always found it hard to be friends with women, part of it was because they usually made an emotional bee-line straight to jealousy of Kim's looks and career but mainly because they probably found it hard to make friends with the woman who was on a poster in their teenage boys room wearing nothing but a bra and panties in her most popular film Even Zombies And Werewolves Like Strippers. As you could imagine, it wouldn't be easy welcoming the woman their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers fantasied about round for Sunday dinner. But hopefully, all of that was about to change. She had resolved never to do a film like that again, not with a baby on the way and certainly not after. 

Sliding off the couch, Kim left the living room and plodded into the kitchen to check on the dishes. After she gave birth, she should probably think about investing in a pair of sweats and some baggy t-shirts to walk about the house in, rather than in her underwear as she did currently. That kind of thing couldn't be good for a child's upbringing. Or perhaps it promoted a healthy body image and perspective on the human body? Kim wasn't sure, but she resolved to Google it later as soon as she got back from the hospital and pinned her new baby scan to the fridge, something that had become the favourite part of her day over the past few months. She glanced over at the 12 week scan that took pride of place in the centre of the fridge door and grinned so much she put the Cheshire Cat in Alice In Wonderland to shame. Kim couldn't quite believe it. All Kim and Mark had ever wanted was to start a family, build a life together and be with each other; everything she asked for was coming true and more with her high school sweetheart in tow. It was almost too good to be true. Almost. 

She popped the hood of the dishwasher and had a peek inside, pulling her head back as the steam billowed out like she'd been keeping a Steam Engine train hostage in close quarters and it was now voicing it's protest. Once the steam cleared, she poked her head in to inspect what she hoped was a treasure chest of clean dishes sparkling back and for the most part it was, barring the odd straggling bit of food debris clinging onto the plate for dear life. It would appear that, no matter how expensive their dishwasher or how many times they put on the cycle, they just couldn't get every piece of dirt washed away. Sighing, she flicked on the radio pulled out the trays and emptied the dishwasher, whistling while she worked like a modern day Snow White. Putting the clean dishes and cutlery back into their cupboards she took out the still dirty ones, filled the sink basin with hot soapy water, grabbed the scrubber and got to work. For all the griping, moaning and arguing that she and Mark did over whose responsibility it was that the dishes got so dirty and whose turn it was to clean them (one of the reasons they bought the damn dishwasher in the first place was to bring a certain level of peace to the household, although they still argued about who should fill it and who should empty it) Kim rather enjoyed the process of washing them by hand. It was cleansing, almost meditative. It allowed her to disconnect from the world around her, all the white noise that the world had become and allowed her to focus on just one thing. Of course, there wasn't a chance in hell she'd tell Mark this or she'd find herself chief dishwasher for life and she wasn't ready to give him the satisfaction, no matter how much she loved him. It was much more fun to see him squirm just a little bit.

Dipping her hands into the water, she started to clean the dishes and let her mind switch into a trance. Thinking about the baby, their own little bundle of joy that was just a few months away, a gift that was so close to unwrapping she ticked off the mental check list of things they needed to do before the baby was born. The nursery needed done, that was the main thing. Baby clothes needed bought (Kim was going to take up knitting but she couldn't get the hang of it – perhaps another problem motherhood would solve) and of course, the most important thing – the name. That was her favourite thing about this experience so far (even more than the scans) was lying in bed late at night with Mark, hand on her tummy and flicking through the book of baby names, or trolling the internet for ideas. Mark had found one he liked on a website for Greek mythology and near resolute that this was what the baby was going to be called. Even thinking about it now made her laugh. He'd sat bolt upright, and snapped his fingers. 

Mark. "I got it."

Kim laughed. "I bet you don't. But OK, go on then. I'll indulge you."

Mark. "I'm telling you, I 100% have it. You're going to hear it and think 'Mark, my god. You are right. You should be in charge of naming all the babies in the world from now. You should be Chief Baby Namer."

Smiling, Kim gave her best fake supportive stare. "Of course you will. Now are you going to continue to pontificate or are you going to tell me the name?"

"Pontificate? That's a big word for such a dainty little lady like you," Mark teased.

She hit him with a pillow then, knowing that he liked to wind her up like this. "Anymore of that and I'll pontificate you. Now are you going to tell me the name?"

He shifted, faced her straight on the bed and stared her in the eyes. "OK. You ready?"

"I'm sure I am."

Mark smiled. "OK. We're going to name our baby, wait for it, Andromeda. Andi for short."

The name hung in the air. Kim just looked at her husband, his big eyes pleading. "Well?"

Kim reached over and took the laptop from him. "Yeah I think you've had enough googling tonight."

"Come on. We can have a little Greek mythology set. Andromeda, Medusa and little Zeus."

She laughed so hard then that she thought she might break into early labour as he grabbed her and threw her back on the bed laughing and kissed her. It was a nice memory and she looked at those moments with such fondness that it was almost enough to convince her to name the baby Andromeda in order to remember the laughter and the kisses every time she called on her child. Common sense prevailed of course. Mark was always a little left field with names.

A scuffling, squawking and thumping noise from the porch distracted her from her trance and put her hazy eyed trip down memory lane to and end as she went to investigate. She knew it would be the cat, (it always was) and he started scratching on front of the door. From the sound of it, he had decided to bring them home a present, which usually came in the form of a field mouse or a robin red breast and always prompted the same response from Mark. "I wish he'd just get us a gift card." Not a joke that was all that funny but he'd worn her down with it that she couldn't help but giggle just a little whenever he said it. Approaching the front door, she could see through the frosted glass the outline of their cat standing over something that lay still, confirming her suspicions that it was indeed a little bird. However, opening the door, Kim took a step back and yelped out. In place of where she expected to see a robin or a mouse was a single, dead magpie. It lay there, it's black and white plumage stained with red and the blue green gloss of its tail feathers surrounded the dead bird in tatters. The cat looked from Kim to the bird curiously, wondering if she was happy with his gift. Kim simply stood and stared, her hand moving like a reflex to her baby-bearing belly. She wasn't the superstitious sort but even a tableau of this nature on her doorstep made her feel a little nauseous. It's just the pregnancy. Delayed morning sickness. She tried to convince herself. Pushing her worries to the back of her mind, Kim knew she had to clean it up before Mark got home, because he was the superstitious type. Pulling on a pair of yellow marigolds, Kim bent down to pick up the bird but before she could wrap her hand over the dead creature the cat had pounced forward, picked the bird up in his mouth and bounding off and out of sight. Kim watched him go and continued to stare as he found a little shading under the bush and plunged his teeth into the bird's chest and tore out the innards before ripping off the head. Tearing her gaze away, Kim shut the door and stepped back into the house, feeling a damn sight less calm than she had been moments ago. Throwing the marigolds into the cupboard, she returned to the kitchen, plunging her hands into the hot soapy water to soak off the bird, despite not having laid a finger on it she felt like the poor things blood was on her hands. As she washed, she tried to shake it out of her mind, the surrounding cloud of dark thoughts and worries. She wasn't superstitious but for some reason, this had shaken her a little. Was it a bad omen? About the baby? Something else? No. It couldn't be and it wasn't. It was just a cat being a cat, that's all. Nothing more than—

"Ow!" Kim retreated her hand from the basin as the water turned red. She'd slit her hand on a piece of broken glass, not that she remembered any glasses or mugs smashing as she washed them. Quickly, she ran it under the tap and wrapped it in a towel as she found the first aid kit and patched herself up. Emptying the basin into the sink, she gingerly picked up the piece of glass and tossed it in the bin. What a strange morning. She thought. But she could dwell on the thought no longer as she looked at the time and realized she had to leave for the hospital to make the scan in time.

Giving the sink a quick rinse, Kim put the rest of the dishes away and turned to give the baby scan on the picture one last look and a good luck kiss as she had developed a habit of doing. But it wasn't there. Frantic, she searched the kitchen high and low for the picture of her little baby. It had been there just seconds before, just before the whole incident with the magpie and the broken glass. Breathing, Kim forced herself to be calm. The picture would be there somewhere. And that's when she saw the corner of it poking out from under the fridge. It probably slipped under there in her commotion to patch up her cut. Bending down, Kim picked the baby scan back up and put it back in its place and gave it a little kiss. But before she turned to leave the kitchen, the sight of something out of the window staring back at her caused her to pause and look out. There, perched on the garden fence and staring into the kitchen was one, single magpie. Kim let her gaze fix on it for a few moments. There was something about the way it looked at her, like it was looking at her. After a minute, Kim forced herself to break eye contact with the bird and shake herself back into reality. She was being crazy. Maybe it was the hormones. Or maybe it was something else. No. It was the hormones. Her anxiety levels had increased due to the pregnancy that was probably it. She was looking for signs of things that weren't there. She'd ask the Doctor about it during the scan. Grabbing her jacket and keys from the kitchen's table, Kim started to head out of the kitchen and make her way out of the house to head to the hospital. Before leaving the kitchen though, she took one last look out of the kitchen window to see the magpie on the garden fence. But where the magpie had been moments before, perched on the wood and staring back at her, was nothing but thin air. Shaking any thoughts from her mind, Kim stepped out of the kitchen, out of the house and into the car, not giving the very strange events of her morning a single, second thought.