Part 1

Melissa Jennifer Newick, “Mel” to all her friends, hated flying. With her five feet ten she was usually cramped in most airplane seats. She didn’t like to sit still for the amount of time an airplane trip usually demanded, but most of all she disliked that she as unable to get some privacy on an airplane. Wherever she looked there was people and even if they didn’t look at her she was sure they were wondering what she was up to, or if she even was right in her head.

Melissa was on her way to college. This was the first time she was going away on her own. It was refreshing, and scary at the same time. Melissa wasn’t just scared to take care of her own life because it was a new experience, but because the one time she had tried she had done really bad.

Flying made Melissa feel trapped. She needed to be able to go away and be on her own whenever she felt like it. Not that she was a private person, it was just that sometimes — she never knew beforehand, not until it was just about to happen — she had visions. She could always feel it coming. It started as a tickle in her neck, a buzzing in her ears. Then it was happening.

Right now, Melissa was in the middle of a vision. Her hands were clasping the armrests, her were eyes closed and her breathing quickened. She tried to look as if she was resting. She knew no one would believe that. She hoped they would just think she was afraid of flying and dismiss any strange behavior on her part.

Melissa’s visions seldom made her experience harmony and calm. Torrents of images were swirling before her, one image replaced by the next in a high, almost unbearable speed. Her mind was flooded with lights and shadows that came so fast she almost didn’t have a chance to interpret them before they faded. They came in bright flashes and the perspective changed as if a drunk or craze held the camera of her inner eye.

She had a hard time not twitching. Her knuckles were white and her teeth were clenched together. The images, too fast or not, were telling her a painfully detailed story. It was vivid, as real as if she had been there herself. The vision took place in a small room. Dark. Lit only by a single source of light. Someone was lying on a bed; someone else was standing by it, leaning over the reclining person. Suddenly the standing person climbed the bed, straddled the person in it. They were making love. The presence of danger was tangible. She could almost reach out and touch it.

She would probably have been able to keep her calm if she had only been an observer, but the visions didn’t work like that. The point of view constantly changed. One moment she saw the situation from a neutral, third party position, the next she was one of the people in the vision. She experienced everything they did and now, when it was a couple making love, the sensations were impossible to ignore.

Melissa had never been prudish; some of her friends even called her bold and foul-mouthed, but still some of her visions made her cheeks burn with self-consciousness. You would think, she used to think, with my past, these kinds of images should mean little or nothing.

The people in Melissa’s visions were never people she knew. That usually didn’t bother her. This time, however, she was able to sense danger so imminently it made her stomach hurt. The people in this vision might end up getting seriously harmed, even dead, and she was unable to see their faces properly!

How much Melissa ever tried to focus; she couldn’t make out their faces. Instead she was flooded with useless details; the woman had light pink nipples, her breasts were soft, and her skin was smooth, so was her hot, wet pussy. The man was well built; she could feel and see the muscles in his belly and hips tense every time he pushed up at her. He was a burning spear deep inside her, and his coarse pubic hair tickled her clean-shaved crotch.

It annoyed the woman some — his rough hairs — but she didn’t bother much. She was looking for something much more important than sex. Melissa suddenly understood how essential this was to her. It was more than sex; this was her prayer, her way of worshiping her god. This was her celebration of life. Melissa felt a shiver traveling down her spine. When the man started to gasp in preorgasmic pleasure the vision thankfully switched perspective and Melissa suddenly realized the couple wasn’t alone in the room. There was another couple just a few feet from them. Or was she looking into a dark, hazy mirror? She tried to focus on the other couple but as she did the vision faded away into the usual darkness behind her closed eyelids.

Melissa tried to breathe as slowly as she could. She pushed a couple of blond stray hairs behind her ear and glanced at the older lady to her left. Melissa had no cause to worry though; her face had been hidden in shadows and the lady was reading a book, totally oblivious to what may, or may not have been going on in the mind of the girl beside her.

It was like the woman felt touched, maybe by Melissa’s thoughts, or more plausibly, her glances. She lowered her book and smiled, “Worried dear?”

Melissa didn’t say anything but she frowned and nodded. Better make her think I’m scared of flights than crazy.

Melissa’s mother had been suspicious when her youngest daughter had declined to go to any New York university and instead decided to go to Louisiana and attend Moon River College. Melissa knew her mother wanted to have her around so she could keep an eye on her. She felt safe having her mother’s eyes on her, but her instincts had told her something completely different; she needed go to Moon River. It was there she would be able to do what she was supposed to. She had no clue what she was supposed to do, but she knew it would happen there, in Moon River.

“I thought you wanted to major in psychology?” her mother had asked her. Melissa had told her mother that Moon River had a psychology program. Her mother had replied that all universities in the New York area had psychology programs too. Melissa had sighed and said that she was going to Moon River and she wanted her mother to stop “fucking around” with her.

Melissa’s mother had never agreed with her daughter’s language and she didn’t do it then either, but when Melissa brought up the only argument her mother couldn’t really counter — she was going to Moon River to get a fresh start, away from the people she knew in New York — the confrontation ended with her mother mumbling that she only wanted what was best for Melissa.