Electric Blue

“I’m coming, hang on,” I said as I struggled to pull my undies back up. Out of nowhere, I heard screaming.
“Poppy!?” I stood up, regaining my balance and I didn’t see her anywhere. I ran around the front of the tree, and towards the front of the park where she was standing, I looked up the street, nothing, I looked down the street, there was a figure standing up, and a figure on the ground, this night was foggy so it was very hard to know what was going on. “Poppy!” I repeated.
“You FUCKER! YOU DIRTY MOTHER FUCKER!” I heard another scream, it sounded like Poppy, but it was angry, and I’d never heard anger in her voice. It was blood curdling. “BANG!” I saw a spark. It was a gunshot.
“POPPY!” I ran towards the foggy figures in the distance, noticing the one standing was holding shoes, it was Poppy. I ran a little faster, now that I knew I was clear on what was going on. When I reached her side, I grabbed her hand, which had a gun in it; she dropped it by our side. I looked toward the ground where the other body was lying, it was a police officer, but not the one from the other night, a young one, small framed, obviously the new cop on the beat. He had blood coming from his mouth and was barely breathing.
“Poppy, what have you done!?” I said, distressed, but calm.
“Baby, I don’t know. I thought he was- and- I-. I saved you.” she smiled up at me.
She had gone mad, delusional. “Come on, get the gun, we need to get out of here now!”
We ran faster than ever before, towards the hotel and packed our stuff as quickly as possible, wasting no time. We heard sirens. It was hard to tell whether the best thing was to leave now, and risk getting caught or act natural and play asleep and hide the evidence, hoping that it was too foggy for any street cameras to see. Either way we were taking a risk, and not the kind of risk that was exciting, the kind of risk that was scary, if we got caught, I’d lose Poppy at the least. What could I do? We wasted so much time deciding what to do, that either way we were fucked, but eventually, we decided to leave. We’d driven down the road for about an hour, no cops, in fact, no one at all. But it was too early to think we were free just yet.
The comedown had started, for the first time in our relationship I actually was starting to get mad. I was mad within myself, and tried to not let it affect our relationship or our as it was ‘straight’ thinking to get us out of this mess. That was until the shaking started, and the sweating.
“Poppy, I’ve gotta pull over, I’m going to be sick.”
“No, Laretta, are you fucking stupid? Did you miss the memo on me just shooting a fucking cop!?”
“What, are we going to run forever are we!?” She shouted at me. Poppy was a different person, someone I’d never expect to see come out in her. I guess that’s what drugs do to a person. The tension was severe now, and it didn’t matter if we pulled over or not because my anger was overriding my sickness.
“Laretta, we are ALL running, we’re all running from something or someone, everyone in this life has issues that we can’t bear to face. Don’t you DARE cop out on me now, I need you!” Her anger turned to tears and fear.
“Poppy, I’m sorry. I know you’re scared but what can I do?”
“I don’t know, I just want you to never leave me.”
“No matter what babe, I swear to you, I will never leave you.”
“Look, we’ll pull over, you’re right you know, we can’t run forever. Let’s just take the next available opportunity to find a place out of the way, we’ve done it plenty of times before, we can do it again.”
We drove for miles, and were still on the coast, both of us were tired, falling asleep. We had to stop, so we agreed to pull in at the next truck stop and sleep for the two or so hours that were left of the night; we put our van in behind some trees, out of the way. We climbed into the back of the van and pretty much instantly went to sleep, we were wrecked. A few hours later, the sun came up and we had to go again. Before we were leaving, I went for a quick wander into the bushes and found myself walking for almost twenty minutes, I looked back, to see what I could see behind me and there wasn’t much but trees, Poppy hadn’t followed. Up ahead, there was a lake, it was red and surrounded by trees, and I had read about tea tree lakes before but never actually seen one. I ran back to Poppy, grabbed her by the hand and pulled her into the trees.
“Come on, hurry up!”
“Where are we going? And why do we have to run?”
“Somewhere special, come on.”
We ran for about ten minutes, then stopped dead to look at a deer in the distance. What a place we were. I couldn’t express words for what we saw that day, it was like the universe knew we needed something beautiful. We reached a high point on the slight mountain that overlooked the lake. It was even more beautiful from that point and the sun was shining almost directly down on it now. It was sparkling red, like a ruby.
“Wow!” she exclaimed, grabbing my hand and sitting down on a rock.
“Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
“You have absolutely no idea.” Tears welled up in her eyes, sad tears.
“What’s wrong baby?”
“It’s just really scary knowing that this could be the last thing I experience and feel and see for a long time. I’m terrified of losing you Laretta.”
“You won’t lose me, I promise. Everything will be okay. I’m never going to leave you. I still, after all this time can’t find words with enough meaning behind them to express how I feel towards you. I feel like we’ve meant to be together for so long, or like that we have known or do know each other in an alternate universe. It’s like when you know an old soul who has been here before, except you’re familiar to me.”
“Deep, beautiful, mature.
I’ve known you before.
another life, another love.
A drug, I want more.
Your words, your heart.
An angel from above
But a creation from the other side.
A dream, a story
my “morning glory”
Art, love, sex and hate
Draw me in, pull me closer.
Tell me you’ll never go.
I’ve known you before.”
“How the hell do you do that Poppy? How do you take my words and just make them exactly how I want to express them? You’re unbelievable.”
“It’s a gift,” she laughed, wiping the old tears from her face. “I’m an ‘old soul’.” A cheeky grin followed. “Nah, I guess because they’re not just your thoughts, they’re your feelings, and I can relate to that, because of how you show me day in and day out. It’s like your thoughts and feelings are imprinted on my soul or something.”
“When everything goes wrong, you are my home.”
It was getting hot now, and there was still fog, rising from the lake.
“Swim?”
“Let’s do it. Make the most of my freedom while I’ve got it I guess.” We carefully walked and slid down the hill to reach the lake. We took our shoes off, and tested the water and it was surprisingly very warm, almost like a bath. I took my shirt and shorts off and walked in. Poppy still stood with just her feet in, gazing out at the view.
“Are you coming in, or are you just going to stand there all day?”
“I think I’m just going to stand here all day,”
“SPLASH!” she jumped in, clothes on, and chased me through the water.
We swam and screwed around for hours and hours into the afternoon, until a sun shower started and we stopped to gaze at this magnificent rainbow, reflecting off the lake and ascending up into the sky. It was giant, the biggest rainbow I had ever seen. All our problems were forgotten and I wanted nothing more than to be there forever.
“I just want to be here forever with you, build a little shack in the trees that we can live in and be free and live life like a fairytale, finding mushrooms in the woods and having a little garden where we could grow flowers and food.” I kissed Poppy on the lips, and held her tight as we sat on the sand, immersed in water.
It was hard to determine if it was as beautiful as I was seeing it or if it was like a higher consciousness telling me to appreciate the simple things in life before it would all be taken away from us.
The weather started to get cold, so we headed back to the van to get warm and shower at the truck stop. After our shower I was hungrier than ever so we went into the truck stop café and got some food and a coffee to warm us up.
“Hello, young ladies.” A big, Burley truck driver said to us.
“Hello,” we nodded back.
“Is that your van outside?” he asked.
“It sure is.”
“Well, if you guys are in trouble, I suggest you come with me.”
“What?” I questioned, as I looked out the window. The cops were out there looking through our van with torches. “FUCK!”
“Come on then,” we shoved the rest of our food down our throats, left the coffees and went out the back door of the café, following the truck driver through the back of the kitchen, saying hello to one of the cooks on the way through. He had a huge truck, with ‘Happy Gardening’ in big letters on the side.
He opened the back, told us to get in and he would come get us when the cops were gone. We were hardly in a position to believe him but hardly in a position to get arrested either. Once the reality had sunk in, we had nothing to lose but each other. When the driver pulled the big metal door back down, it was pitch black. We sat in the corner closer to the cabin, tripping over what seemed like bags of compost or something. There was no denying it smelt like pot in there though. I suddenly got the irony of “Happy gardening,” this guy was a fulltime drug smuggler. No wonder he was more than willing to harbour fugitives, the guy was fucked either way, just like us, the only difference was he was doing it right. We were quiet as hell, hardly whispering a word until he came back, and opened up. I admit the first split second where I couldn’t see his figure or face, I was terrified. I envisioned the police coming in full raid style and taking Poppy away.
“Well, that’s taken care of. Pigs are gone now.” I’d never met anyone so straight up and forward, like they just didn’t give a fuck about anything yet still willing to help a stranger. We hesitated first, before we approached him and climbed out of the truck.
“You girls are lucky I was here.”
“We truly cannot thank you enough.”
“No, no don’t thank me. All I ask is you keep my little ‘business’ a secret.”
“Mate, that’s no worries. Besides, it’s not like we’re going to be going to the police anytime soon. Your secret is safe with us. Did you get much information from the cops?”
“Nah not really, they wouldn’t tell me much, just that the owner of the van has a warrant out and asked me if I’d seen anything. I told them I had seen two girls and gave them a description slightly different to yours, enough to fool them but not enough to make it obvious I was hiding something, and sent them in the direction where you came from, so I hope you’ve got no commitments back that way. I had to think on my feet, you know.”
He didn’t seem like the kind of guy that hugged anyone but his bike and his truck but I couldn’t help myself, and latched onto him, squeezing tight. He put one arm around me and patted my back.
“No worries mate.”
“Got time for a beer?” I asked.
“Always got time for a beer.” He quaked with laughter, “But put your money away.” He walked around the front of the truck and pulled three beers from a case. “Here ya’s go.”
“Thanks, by the way, I’m Poppy, this is Laretta.”
“Just call me Burley,” he said. “And fuck those names off, I could teach you a thing or two. I don’t think reality has truly hit you yet onto how serious having a warrant out is. You guys need new names. Let’s just fuckin call you Ruby and you Jane aye? Keep it at that? If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in my years it’s don’t trust anybody. Well, except me, you can trust me.”
We chatted over a beer which somehow turned into 6 beers, 2 joints and a line of coke. He gave us some truly helpful words on how to handle ourselves, that this wasn’t a game anymore. Now reality was sinking in, but it was still a little hard to believe, our life was turning into a movie.
After night fall, we helped Burley move all of his ‘supplies’ to the far end of his truck and he rigged up a special ramp and holster for our van to go in the back of the truck. We were suddenly going wherever he was going. I climbed into the front of the truck, after Poppy who was now sitting in between me and Burley. We had a great night, travelling and drinking and getting high, listening to classic rock and roll.
After what seemed like minutes, but was in fact twelve hours on the road, we reached a beautiful house, on the beach. This place was like a mansion, nothing like what I had pictured, I thought for sure we would have pulled up at an old shack somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We reached the front gates which were taller than anything I’d ever seen. Burley punched in a code and they opened. He drove the truck up the long brick driveway and parked in the garage, which was just as big as any regular house. It was filled with nice classic cars.
I was speechless.
Burley shut off the truck and told us to head inside, he followed. We went up a few levels in an elevator. Wow, this place was amazing; it was nothing like a regular mansion. This was the mansion of mansions. We exited the elevator, to reach the kitchen, there were granite floors and benches, and glass door, overlooking the beach and a beautiful pool which had a glass bottom and walls, looking into a shark tank. There was a waterfall, flowing from the roof into the pool, and bright lights.
There was a lady, young and beautiful, she stood about 5’6’’ with long brown hair, she had a little pixie nose and beautiful lips. “Hello, you must be the girls from the truck stop.”
“I’m Ruby, this is my girlfriend Jane.”
Burley piped in, “It’s okay girls. In this house, nothing is secret, it’s when you walk out those gates, or an outsider comes in that you need to worry. They’re your ‘business’ names.”
“Ok well, I’m Poppy, this is Laretta.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Lana.”
Burley put his arms around her, kissed her and embraced her in a hug, “I’ll be home soon, you take care of these girls.” He said, before leaving, this time I’m assuming on a bike of some type, as he grabbed a leather jacket on the way out.
“Come girls, sit. There’s some food made up here for you.”
“Thank you, hey uh, can I just say something without seeming out of turn?”
“Of course,”
“I’m not really sure what is going on, like why are you guys welcoming us into your home?”
“You girls are in trouble, and this is a safe place where no one can touch you.”
“But, what’s the catch? Like are you guy’s secret detectives or what?”
“Catch? There’s no catch. Fuck no, if there’s one thing this family isn’t affiliated with it’s the cops.”
“I’m sorry for questioning your motives but I just still don’t understand. Why would you guys risk everything to help us?”
“Ha ha, well honestly Burley said that you reminded him of me, when I was younger. I was in a similar situation. I was really young and influential, easy to teach. Besides, we can’t have you two running around knowing our secrets can we?” There was a joke in her voice at the end of her sentence, showing that she had utter trust and faith in not only us, but the word of Burley.
“This food is delicious,” Poppy commented, with a mouth full of food. Ugh, she was so cute. She just didn’t give a fuck. That’s what I loved about her.
“Thank you.”
We finished our meals, and Lana took us down the staircase, which was a big spiral staircase, with a red rug that ran down it. The next floor down, had its own theme, it had its own smell, there was a huge lounge room , with the front wall, being the shark tank. It was like a different world on that floor, in comparison to the one upstairs. The tank was mainly dark but lit up with purple and blue lights.
“Welcome to your new house,” Lana said.
“Wow,”
“I’ll leave you guys to it. Pick your room and get comfortable, you girls need some rest and Burley will be back in the morning and we’ll talk then, feel free to shower and help yourself to anything here.”
“Thank you.” Poppy, embraced her in a hug.
Lana smiled and went upstairs.