Fading into Eternal Sleep

Ray Felipe
Jul 23, 2017 · 5 min read

Suki handed him a glass of French bourbon. Her soft hands vibrated beneath his drooping chin. “Good to see you again, Zeph.” She said with her perfect dimpled smile as she handed him an unfiltered cigarette with her free hand. She lights it up with Celtic embroidered acetylene lighter. The blue flame hissed on the glowing tip as the cured tobacco crackled with the bright flaming light. The Skylights’ chrome painted window pane reflected a pair of saline tinted eyes, Zeph’s eyes. He was at the Skylight’s bar. A bar that curves along the uneven surface of the plastic stool that hangs wearily across its warped wooden frame. They squeak. And you can hear them in the bars silence. Zeph stood by the half-open entrance, precariously eyeing the mismatched lounge furniture where he once drifted in aimless space, the deafening sound of darkness crept into his shallow breathing.

“What happened to the Jukebox?” He asked, “And the blue martinis, bottled whiskeys, and filtered vodkas?”. They used to shine like the metro-hedonic strip. Each fragmented glass bounced images of soft swirling eyes that flickered behind the shaded light. It spins upwards towards the uncovered vent beside the dust covered filament bulbs that revealed a static glimpse of crimson hair… eyes in mystic glare. Suki was there. He stood up from the slanted bar stool and watched her slender frame formed in the shadowed glow.

“The Jukebox is there,” she responded, pointing to the wall besides the pool table. Then it played “If I Didn’t Care” by the Inkspots. It was old, and you can hear the crackle of the antique vinyl record.

Zeph coughed out the blue smoke. “It’s been a while,” he said with nicotine breath, careful not to catch her curious stare. He glanced at the passing headlights that beamed on the bars unpainted walls with her bright silver fingernails shined beside his bourbon glass. He glanced at her and remembered the rose petals of Valentines resting against her pale cheek, her red satin shirt peeked on her chest beneath her gray tweed coat.

He remembered when he left Suki when he wandered around the same room without a single step. When he sat there staring at the ceiling lamp and listening to himself breathe. He would watch the various abstract shapes in the polyester coated plywood above his head. He enjoyed it like the grand play on Broadway and felt oneness with the morning sun and the drifting leaves of fall that withers on the drying lawn. He thought about the topics on probabilities with Suki. He thought about the Skylight, the mystic blissful days with Suki. The dismal yesterday that sang dark clouds in ambient rhythms, with Suki floating visibly in liquid air as the orange sunset glows dimly along the dry mountains of Los Angeles.

“You remembered,” She said as she opened the door — — somewhere in his dream.

“Yes,” he replied with a quivering tone.

“You coulda told me you were here…” he paused. ”Am I dreaming?”

“I came here to see you, heard you’re back,” Suki said with a slight twist in her lower lip, her eyelids curled beneath her sulking hair that covered her naked face like strands of woven cotton.

“Where have you been?” She continued.

“I’m not sure, it seemed like it never happened. Am I dreaming?” Zeph asked with a soft quiet whimper. She turned towards the Sulpice coffee desk brimming with alloy mugs and vanilla daisies that sat on the grubby cut coquette carpet in her Chantilly clad Hollywood Hills apartment. “Come on in. But I don’t plan on staying” she said wryly, “I’m leaving.”

And she turned into a misty smoke. Disappearing with the faint light in the corner of the room. He never saw her again, he recalled. Except for the occasional winter nights when he thought of her dancing in liquid air… her bare breast wrapped in satin silk.

At the Skylight, Zeph ran his manicured hands over his hair. “Did you know that proton particles exist as matter… only when observed?” he said with a bourbon-induced smile, rolling the burgundy in his checkered glass. “It turns into matter when observed… by consciousness.” He sucked his unfiltered cigarette and gulped down the tall glass French bourbon. “So, you’re here only because I’m observing you,” he added dryly with a faint smile.

“Well…,” Suki said, appearing from the shadows next to the window bathed in moonlight along the smoked filled bar. Her voice broke the steady hum of his spinning mental flashbacks, “Look who came to fill the empty void…”

He gazed past her raggedly well-kept hair while it shimmered with lotus scented cosmetic oil. She gazed at him with eyes like melting asphalt slab. She was leaning to her right with curved hips on shapely legs on the surface of an uneven brick floor. Like before, he remembers the heart chained nickel-plated necklace on her slender neck that shined like a polished rock.

You are dreaming, Zeph. Wake up. He heard voices in his head, repeatedly.

“You are dreaming, Zeph. Wake up.”

“You are dreaming, Zeph. Wake up.”

You are dreaming. Wake up.

Zeph. Wake up.

Wake up.

She poured him a glass of French bourbon. He sniffed it, sipped, and sensed the sweeping sensation into his blood stream. Suki filled his half-empty glass and he thought about the business, his life… the magazine interviews, guest speaker on conventions. He looked outside the empty street and saw the humdrum of daily social setups that cast shadows in his swiftly dying freedom. She looked at Zeph’s reflected smile and smiled back. The lights dimmed on the bars rusted counter top. He gulped down on his Bourbon and felt an enlightening tingle in the core of his spine; he felt his swelling liver, his burning lungs, and her shining eyes that stared with calming peaceful warmth.

She poured herself a shot.

“Here’s to the illusion that is life,” she said as she raised her crystal jigger close to her lower lip, their eyes locked in a toxic gaze as they drank the fluid joy of bliss. Inside, he felt her; he felt reality like the clearing of a gray sunless sky. In the Skylights fading lamps, drifting in aimless space he felt it turned into a lucid dream. By the fragmented glass window pane saw his reflection. “You are dreaming,” the reflection said, “wake up.” Suki saw it too. Wrapping her hands around him with a smile. She held his hand and walked him towards the Skylights’ chrome painted window pane, bathed in moonlight glow, their image disappeared, fading into eternal sleep.