Chapter 71: Every Time A Bell Rings...

I gawked at Mother in confusion, feeling utterly bewildered by her presence.

Mother was in New York, to begin with. There was no doubt whatsoever about that. Her location had been confirmed by both me and by Sam. During our post-Christmas phone call, both mother and I had promised to make a concerted effort to stay up-to-date on each other’s lives with a little more frequency than once every six months. To that end, we’d shared a very brief phone call on New Year’s Eve. And while she could have theoretically flown across the country to come visit in the intervening days, as of this very morning, Mother had texted me to say that she was cross-country skiing with friends in upstate New York, and I had no reason to believe Mother would lie to me.

Ignore me? Sure.

Move across the country, rent out my childhood home, and leave me on my own? Absolutely.

But outright lie to me? No way.

For Mother to start lying to me for no good reason would truly kill any remaining affection I had left for the woman who had given birth to me. From that point on, our relationship would be as dead as a door-nail.

I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that if Mother was going to start outright lying to me, that our relationship would be as dead as a door-nail.

Moving on.

Where was I? Oh yes, spread-eagle and naked. My shrinking, softening schlong set semi-stiff, semi-limp, and still-soaking-wet before Mother’s baleful gaze. My ankles and wrists tied by gift wrap ribbons to the four corners of the king-size bed in our rented house’s master bedroom. The room itself remained completely silent, lacking even the muffled sounds of activity elsewhere in the house.

“What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise, once again tugging vainly at the rudimentary bonds that did not want to release me from my bondage. One wouldn’t think such flimsy strips of nylon would prove to be so durable, and yet the multiple strands of gift wrap ribbon completely resisted tearing. So I remained stuck in my inglorious position, unable to break free.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Mother asked, remaining exactly where she was with her posture stiff and her arms folded across her chest, dressed in that out-of-place business suit. “I’m here to visit you.”

“Where’s everyone else?”

“That’s not important.”

I blinked twice, not expecting that response. “Not important?”

“For now, it’s just you and me,” Mother explained brusquely. “The presence of the many, many young women in your life is not required at this time. Therefore, they are not present.”

I blinked twice again, not understanding. “What?”

“Do please try to keep up, Matthew. This isn’t complicated.” Mother sighed in obvious disappointment.

“When did you get here? How did you get here?”

“The ‘how’ is not important, and neither is the ‘when’.”

“Well then what is important?”

“Now THAT is a VERY good question. Let’s find out, shall we?” Mother turned around and strode to the closed bedroom door, her high heels clacking on the hardwood floor with each step.

She turned the doorknob and started to open the door, and at the same time, I called out to her, “Are you expecting me to go with you? Because at the moment, I’m quite literally tied up.”

“No you’re not.”

“Of course I ... am?” I stared in shock at my unclad wrists, now held aloft in front of my face. I then nearly lost my lunch and felt the room spin in circles at the realization that I was no longer naked and spread-eagle across the bed. Rather, I found myself sitting upright on the foot of the bed and dressed in a sharp law firm suit of my own: freshly pressed black slacks, a matching jacket over a crisp white dress shirt, and a black tie. “What the fuck?!?”

“Matthew! There’s no cause for such language,” Mother scolded.

I blinked twice, gawking at my own attire. “How in the world did...?” My voice trailed off when I looked back up at Mother and realized that half of her body was illuminated by a bright white light. It wasn’t just ANY light – the kind one might expect of typical incandescent illumination coming from typical ceiling fixtures in a typical hallway. Rather, it was the blindingly super-bright, super-white glare of an otherworldly portal to another dimension or heaven or something, the kind you see in movies. And I reached down to pinch myself just to see if I was really awake.

But I didn’t awake.

“I’m not dead am I?” I asked.

Figures that ‘Death by Fucking’ would be how I’d gone out. Well, that and maybe a stroke brought on by Sam’s super-pills.

Mother just scoffed and rolled her eyes, which was actually a relief.

“Is this a dream?” I asked, which I supposed still wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a stroke.

“If it was, then I wouldn’t really be here, now would I?” Mother replied.

I frowned. “That doesn’t actually answer my question.”

“Quite right. But I’m not really here to answer your questions.”

“Then what ARE you here for?”

Mother’s eyebrows popped and she gave me a Cheshire grin that was somehow more terrifyingly wider than any smile she’d ever shown me in my entire life. “Follow me and find out.”

With that, Mother fully opened the door, revealing a rectangular field of infinite white light seemingly without end. She walked through the doorway, almost immediately disappearing from view, and I simply sat there for a second, my jaw on the floor, momentarily frozen in vapor-lock as to what I should do.

This is a dream, right? There’s only one thing you CAN do, I told myself. Follow her and find out.

What happens if I don’t follow her and find out?

Where’s the fun in that?

Taking a deep breath, I pushed myself to a standing position on the floor in front of the bed. Reaching up, I grabbed hold of my tie and tugged it a little tighter, bracing myself for whatever might come.

“There is no spoon,” I stated aloud.

And then I walked through the open door.

In the real world, doorways are built in such a way that ensures a level surface across both sides of the doorway. When typically walking out through a bedroom door, the hallway on the other side is at the exact same elevation to ensure that people don’t fall flat on their face on the other side, right? But perhaps I shouldn’t have expected a glowing magic portal of infinite whiteness to follow the real-world rules of door-making. Come to think of it, the sliding door of my childhood home was built several inches above the back patio so that outside rainwater could never seep into the house, so perhaps my thoughts about the real-world rules of door-making were utter crap.

But I wasn’t thinking about the sliding door of my childhood home, and I was expecting to step through the glowing magic portal of infinite whiteness and step back down onto a surface at the exact same elevation. So you’ll understand that when my foot went down... and then kept going down... I stumbled forward, off-balance, until my foot finally hit the concrete a full sixteen inches or so below the point I was expecting.

Then my hands hit the concrete a second later, arresting my fall just before my face smashed into the unyielding surface. And I sprawled out on all fours across what turned out to be a downtown San Francisco sidewalk complete with moldy green and brown cracks, years-old chewing gum, and a fine layer of car exhaust dust, all while dressed in a (formerly) clean and crisp black suit.

Still better than being butt naked and tied spread-eagle across a bed.

“Ah, there you are. Took you long enough,” Mother scolded.

Face-down in a modified push-up position with my knees and elbows on the cement, I looked up at her and groaned. A split-second later, I saw a heavy brown work boot, complete with steel toes, start swinging directly for my face. On instinct, I yelled and dropped my chest to the ground while blocking my head with crossed forearms, but no impact came. The sounds of footsteps receded behind me, and I half-rolled, half-twisted to look over my shoulder. A CalTrans utility worker, clad in a yellow jacket with hi-vis reflective striping and a white helmet, sauntered away from me without a backwards glance.

More footsteps sounded off in front of me.

Three more utility workers were walking straight for me, but just as I started to duck and cover again, the lead worker’s boot passed straight through my chest as if I wasn’t even there. The next two likewise walked right past without being impeded by what I assumed to be my ghostly, intangible form. And I realized that just like in the movies, they couldn’t see or feel me.

Nor could the really hot blonde with big tits that spilled over the top of her red dress and bounced quite provocatively as she sauntered by.

Actually, the hot blonde turned and winked at me.

What the fuck is going on?

There is no spoon.

“Waitaminute,” I muttered, looking up at Mother as she stood in front of the featureless gray wall beside us. An office-drone walked briskly by me, and when I stuck my arm out in front of him, he merely passed straight through it. “If I’m not really here and people can’t see or touch me, how is that I can feel the sidewalk beneath my hands?”

Mother rolled her eyes. “Don’t sprain something trying to think about it too hard.”

“If I jumped off this skyscraper here,” I asked while getting to my feet and pointing upwards, “would I die on impact?”

Mother sighed. “Are you trying to waste my time, Matthew?”

I waggled a finger. “You keep calling me ‘Matthew’, but you’re not even my real mother. None of this is really happening.”

“Of course I’m not your real mother; your subconscious is what chose my form. But that doesn’t necessarily mean this isn’t real. As far as you’re concerned, what I’m about to show you is very real.”

I blinked. “What?”

She smiled that Cheshire grin again. “Think of me as akin to The Ghost of Christmas Future.”

I blinked twice. “What?”

“Come now. I know you’ve seen A Christmas Carol. Well, I know you’ve seen Mickey’s Christmas Carol. And I know you still have PTSD from that door-knocker turning into Goofy’s Jacob Marley and howling, ‘Scrooooooooge!’”

Mother’s voice had magically changed to that of the voice actor from the cartoon film, and I felt a shiver run down my spine. My jaw hung slack for a moment, but I managed to swallow my spit and straighten my spine. “Waitaminute. Does that mean I’m going to get visited by two other ghosts? Or if this is A Christmas Carol, wouldn’t that make you Jacob Marley? Because you showed up in my room first. And then wasn’t The Ghost of Christmas Future a silent-but-deadly Grim Reaper?”

“Perhaps a more appropriate example would be It’s A Wonderful Life, and you can think of me as Clarence, your guardian angel,” Mother suggested.

“I’ve never seen It’s A Wonderful Life. Heard of it, but never seen it, not that my real Mother would ever care to know that.” I frowned. “Come to think of it, if you’re a figment of my imagination, so you really SHOULD know that.”

Mother rolled her eyes again. “You’re still thinking too hard about it,” she scolded.

Her tone of extreme disappointment stabbed me through the heart with the same icy coldness I’d felt the day she pointed out I’d only gotten an A-minus in U.S. History, and I couldn’t help but swallow thickly while slumping my shoulders and scrutinizing the ground before my shoes.

“Come now, stop dawdling. We must get inside. Let’s not be late,” Mother insisted, waving me towards the large front doors of the building next to us.

I picked my head up. “Late for what? This isn’t real, remember?”

“I just told you: this is very real.” She sighed and checked her watch. “Nevermind. We mustn’t be late.”

Mother snapped her fingers, and the universe disappeared into infinite white.

I reappeared in the hallway of an upper floor in a downtown skyscraper office building.

I also appeared some sixteen inches above the hallway floor of that office building, and I let out an awkward yelp of surprise as I dropped like a rock and abruptly landed on both feet, my knees buckling slightly. But I managed to not fall flat on my face this time, merely squatting down a bit with my arms out to the sides before finding my balance and standing up straight.

I blinked. “Are you doing that on purpose?”

Mother shrugged. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I rolled my eyes and looked around. Despite there being a dozen people diligently working in the nearby cubicle farm, nobody seemed to notice my presence nor had reacted to my yelp. So I assumed that I was still more or less “not really here”. And I looked up to find Mother watching me with a hint of amusement in her eyes.

And then she pointedly tilted her head towards the clear glass pane beside her.

It was an internal window between the hallway and the luxurious corner office beside us. I could see straight through the glass to the floor-to-ceiling windows providing an expansive view of the downtown San Francisco Financial District. The Ferry Building was just in view near the floor, with the dark blue waters of the San Francisco Bay and the gray architecture of the Bay Bridge just beyond. But I noticed these details only in passing, with my gaze locked onto the buxom blonde bombshell in a crisp gray business suit before me.

I frowned. Something was ... off. The woman standing before me had platinum-blonde hair cut in a mid-length bob above her shoulders and had very nice curves; but the way she stood, the way she carried herself, didn’t quite feel right. She didn’t feel like ... Sam.

The blonde paced back and forth in the space between her desk and the floor-to-ceiling window behind her, obviously carrying out some kind of phone conversation. I couldn’t hear her from this side of the glass, but I saw the slim boom mike of a wireless headset protruding forward from her cheek. She held in her hand some kind of device that could have been some kind of cell phone, except that I didn’t see a keypad on it – just a super-large screen. She had three computer monitors side-by-side-by-side, all mounted on a bracket to create additional desk space, all of them impossibly thin. And only then did I remember that Mother had initially said that she was akin to The Ghost of Christmas Future.

Was this ... an older version of Sam?

“What is the current year?” I asked without taking my eyes off of Sam.

“Does it really matter?” Mother replied dismissively.

And then the blonde turned to face the hallway.

It wasn’t Sam. No matter how many years had passed, I knew Sam’s face and this woman wasn’t her. Only then did I look to the name permanently carved into the solid mahogany door: Inger Nilsson.

Not Samantha Smith.

I turned around to face Mother. “Inger Nilsson? Why in the world would you bring me to--”

My voice trailed off as a dark-haired woman just past Mother’s left ear caught my attention, this one with Sam’s face.

She was no longer blonde. She was also ... well... older. Her face, while still beautiful, had started developing wrinkles around her eyes that reflected the inevitable passage of time – the kind that no skin cream could completely erase. She still wore a nice business suit, the same as always. She still had a stupendous pair of breasts, but it was clear from the rest of her figure that her waist had thickened considerably to match. And with a weary sigh, she accepted a large stack of papers from a departing colleague and then sat down heavily at her cramped desk in the cubicle farm.

A cheap plastic nameplate velcroed to the fabric cubicle wall at a slightly off-kilter angle read: Samantha Smith.

“What happened?” I muttered. “Sam was supposed to be a partner by age thirty.”

“You happened,” Mother stated dispiritedly. Taking a deep breath, she shook her head and sighed, “Rather, you didn’t happen.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mother shook her head and gave me a sad look. “Let me show you.”

She snapped her fingers, and the universe disappeared into infinite white.

I reappeared in the living room of a downtown apartment with a view of nothing but the gray concrete building about twenty feet away across a small alley. Even that view was partially blocked by the rusty black metal of an emergency staircase.

I also appeared some sixteen inches above the living room floor of that apartment, but I was prepared for it this time and did not yelp as I dropped like a rock and abruptly landed on both feet, my knees buckling slightly. I was prepared and rather neatly landed, squatting to absorb the shock and then immediately popping upright. And I flashed Mother a rather smug grin.

I did not expect to see pride in Mother’s face, but it still stung to see her roll her eyes and purse her lips with an expression that plainly said I should’ve figured it out a long time ago already.

Why does it sting? It’s not like she’s really your mother.

Shaking my head, I got my bearings and looked around. It looked to be your standard one-bedroom apartment: a little cramped perhaps but perfectly serviceable. It was relatively clean, at least, if not luxurious.

“Oh Matty...” Sam’s voice called from somewhere to my left, her tone somewhat mournful.

I snapped my head around in surprise at the sound of my name. Could Sam see me? Holy crap! Having assumed I was invisible, inaudible, and altogether not really here, I found myself in a complete panic with no idea how to even begin to react.

But Sam wasn’t looking at me. She stood in her kitchen alongside two high-backed barstools parked in front of the kitchen peninsula, her open purse atop the cheap laminate surface. There was no dining room. An open bottle of red wine and a single half-filled wine glass stood alongside her purse. She was dressed in the same business suit she’d worn to the office, although the jacket had been removed and was now draped across one of the barstool backrests. And she stared down at her cell phone (assuming it was a cell phone), the screen that occupied its entire front surface glowing with an image – one that I couldn’t see from my vantage point.

Despite the fact that I stood in the middle of her living room, she didn’t take notice of my presence nor Mother’s. And when I took a few cautious steps forward, my shoes clomping loudly on the floor without Sam visibly reacting, I returned to my assumption that she could neither see nor hear me.

Without glancing up at me, Sam shook her head, set down her phone with a sigh, collected her suit jacket, and walked away down the hallway.

I followed her into the hallway and took note of the photographs decorating the walls. There were photos of her family, and of her siblings’ families. Sam’s older brother John had a pretty wife and two boys, the eldest as tall as his father. Sam’s older sister Rachael had a handsome husband and a darling girl of about ten. And there was a photo of Sam with ... a cat.

Not being a cat person myself, I couldn’t tell the precise breed. It was not a large cat, light brown with some darker brown and black striping, and very light green eyes. It was a candid photo with Sam smiling while the cat nested itself atop her head, and it put a smile on my face. Only then did I glance around and notice that there was a cat tree tucked away in the corner of the living room alongside a litter box, although there was no immediate sign of the cat itself.

There were also several photos of Sam’s friends on the walls. One was a photo of The BTC from the summer after high school: seven girls and I clad in sweatshirts and shorts at sundown having a beach barbecue for dinner. I could close my eyes and remember the salt smell of the ocean mixed with barbecue chicken and ribs from that day.

One was a photo of The BTC from college, but from a scene I most certainly did NOT remember. Seven girls surrounded me on the porch steps of the Berkeley house: Sam, Naimh, Belle, Eva, Luna, and Skylar, along with a busty blonde girl I didn’t recognize. I’d grown out my sideburns a bit and wore a cropped goatee without a mustache: a style I had never sported in my life. There was also a small, fluffy dog in Belle’s lap: the beautiful coat and muzzle of a Golden Retriever set on the short legs and funny elongated frame of a wiener dog, its head tilted back while stealing a doggy kiss, much to the pixie girl’s squealing surprise. And I stopped to study the photo for a moment before a noise from the bedroom drew my attention.

I took one last glance at the photos on the walls, noting that there were no other men featured except for me, Sam’s father, and Sam’s brother. I briefly pondered what I felt about that, and then I continued walking down the hall until coming to an abrupt stop in the open doorway.

Sam stood with her back to me. She’d kicked off her heels at the foot of a simple queen-size bed, and I realized the sounds of those heels landing on the floor must’ve been the noise that had drawn my attention. She was in the middle of peeling down her business skirt, and I found a twitching in my pants at the mouth-watering sight of Sam’s bodacious bubble butt put on perfect display by black lace panties when she bent over at the waist.

Do you even have a dick to twitch? You’re an ethereal ghost who’s not really here, remember?

I put a hand to my crotch, feeling my bulge, confirming in my head that yes, I had a dick.

“Matthew, must you?” Mother scolded from behind me.

I jerked my hand away from my crotch.

Meanwhile, Sam stood up with her skirt in hand and turned around. She grabbed her jacket off the bedspread and carried both articles over to the closet to hang them up for future use. The closet was right behind me, and if I stayed right where I was, she’d probably pass right through my ephemeral form like the utility workers had, but I’d already backed away instinctively to let her go by.