I actually wrote this all in one sitting. I hope it makes you think about life in general.

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One night, I was tired but unbelievably tense, and things were not working out well for me. My boss had just told me that since we didn't make our mark this quarter, no one would be getting the bonus we usually expect for Christmas. It's a little hard to stomach at 2 A.M. For one thing, and the fact that I was a wee bit sick of gut from all the verbal abuse and such was just intimidatingly destroying me.

It was hard for me to sleep, so I tried to think of ways to get rested.
I took a couple of acetaminophens with PM sleep aids...only made me worry even more.
I tried counting sheep...the 120th one was an amputee and got caught on the fence, poor thing.
I picked up a magazine...Time was too tense, Newsweek no longer news, Ladies' Home Journal...oops, that was for my wife.
So I went and punched the pillow on my bed and said “God, what can I do? My life is going down the drain. Help me sleep, help me get through my suffering.” Punching the pillow made me weary, so I closed my eyes and dozed off.

Within a moment, it was daylight again, and I felt quite rested. But something was poking at my side.
“Steve, Steve. You up, love? Wake up, I have something to show you,” the voice called, with more poking at my side.
The voice was strange, and at first, I thought it was my wife over on the other bed trying to wake me up because I overslept. But the thing was, the clock still read 2:15 A.M.

“You there? Wake up, Steve. We need to talk.” The voice seemed to become less and less like my wife and more like a young woman, one whose voice escaped me.

“Who is that, dear? Kindly cheer up the children, dear. I have to work in the morning,” I angrily muttered, trying to get the voice to go away.

The voice gave a deep, young-teenage-blond laugh and began poking again. “You have to get up. I am here for you, Steve.”

I then realized that the voice would not go away, and calling it my wife wasn't going to make it go away either, so I slowly opened my eyes.

What I saw surprised me more than anything in my life. It was a scary wake-up call.

“Hi, Steve. It's nice to see you from down here.”
I thought: Oh my God, someone's broken in to my house! So I let out a huge yell which seemed to echo through the room, down the hallway, but the resonance never seemed to stop echoing.

Here, before my eyes, was a young woman, maybe no more than twenty-five or twenty-six, standing before me in a white robe which seemed to fluoresce in the daylight shining through the window. The robe looked like a simple sheet, cut medium at the chest, and up at the shoulders.
“Good morning, Steve. No need to scream, I am here for you,” she spoke to me, sounding very calm and collected but also with a tinge of energy hidden beneath the charm.

Startled, I grabbed the sheets and sat up. Obviously puzzled, and beyond that at that, I looked in her eyes, a beautiful blue with cleanliness, a face that had not seen the rigors of time, and long blonde hair which blew in the breeze. “Huh....huh...who are you? And what are you doing in my house?” Somehow, it didn't seem to fit.

“We talked last night, Steve. You don't remember?” she added, puzzling me even further.

Immediately, thoughts of being inebriated came to my head. I was probably out drinking up a storm, and this was my hangover. Damn, what did I do, I thought....

Somehow the words came out. “I...talked to you. But I'm a married man.”

She smiled, as if to brush away all the things I was saying. With a chuckle, she said “Oh, I talk to many, many married men. Single ones, too. Often the married ones call more often.” She gazed into the sunlight. “But that's my job.”

I paused for a second, and the signature look of befuddlement ran over my face. Somehow, this was starting to scare me.

I finally realized it...and if I was right, I was going to burn. “You're....you're not....a.....a...”

“A prostitute?” she chuckled back. “Oh, no, I'm not here for that. I should revise my opening lines when I start talking to people.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good. I'm out of money, anyways.” I let out a distempered laugh, as if to wipe it away.

She turned around and gazed at me in a look of disgust. “Out of money? I never thought you'd be that type. Heh.” She walked over to the window, and her eyes began to close slowly, and she let out a sigh.

Scared, as always people are when they see girls in sadness, I fired back a quip. “Well, I mean, I could say that I give money....for good use, too. I mean, it is a job.”

She turned back, her hair blowing in the breeze. “It is what it is, I guess. But selling one's pride is something I take anger over, which is rare.” I felt her pain go through me suddenly, like a hot knife.

If I felt any guilt now as a man, I would never feel any more than what I did at this point. “Well, I mean, I can honestly say....with pride now, with pride...” gesturing, “ I have not had that kind of relation in many, many, mannnyyyy years, miss.” She began to turn with distrust to me. “Many.”

In the heat of the moment, she gave a weak smile to me. “You are of sound mind, Steve. I appreciate that.” She walked over, her shoes pitter-pattering on the floor. As I sat up, she placed a quick kiss on the cheek.

Somehow, I was able to keep my face from turning as red as a beet in the process, mostly because I was scared to find out what my wife was going to think about having this young woman in the room. “Thank you, uh....” I didn't remember her name.

She sat down next to me, in an old rocking chair. “You don't need to know my name. All you need to know is I've known you even before you were born.” She smiled and took my hand.

As she took it, her face began to glow ever so brighter. I could feel a warmth run up the arm, a warmth which seemed to soothe and relax my body. It ran up to my shoulder, and found its place in my heart, giving my lungs a deeply-earned reason to breathe once again. “I appreciate the fact that you have welcomed me into your home, Steve. Most people try to keep me outside or to one room. It's a shame.”

With this warmth that was running over me, I tried to verse words to her that would make her happy. “But why would they keep you in one room, m'dear? Were you abused as a child or something?” I asked curiously.

Immediately, she looked down, and her blue eyes began to water, and she began to look older – not completely old, but age was starting to wreak her. “I....I am abused every day. People go and say my name to make money, to make laughs, to give anger to people. They say my name on TV, everywhere. And if I could ever make up for all the lost insults that still float around.....” She couldn't say another word – she began to weep openly.

All of a sudden, she began to let go of my hand, and a feeling of a cool, stiff breeze began to run through the window. “Please...please don't let go. Hold my hand, dear. Life's not that bad.” She openly wept even more, and so I grasped her and pulled her body over to bedside.

She wiped one last tear from her eye. Her voice began to quiver. “Steve, I'm sorry I have to be this way. But sometimes a person as revered as me has to go and break down every once in a while.”

I grasped her, and pulled her over my shoulder to weep once again. “Revered?” I shot a glance. “Who's revered?” I whispered under my breath, a look of puzzlement on my face.

Pulling herself up, she looked into my eyes again. Her eyes began to look old, and her hands began to quake, as if she were going through a significant mental breakdown. “I...I'm sorry, Steve. It's not this way all the time. Here, get out of bed. I have something I want you to do.” So, she pulled me up, sheets and all, and led me down the hallway of my second floor. “Come with me.”
Her hands took a vise grip on mine, and I had no choice but to over-run the sheets, drag down the hallway, NOT PUT ON MY SLIPPERS OR ROBE, and go down and try to keep her...whoever this was, from going and yanking my arm out.

She ran down the steps as only someone her age could, and pulled me out the front door. The warm morning sun shone, and all of a sudden, I felt completely naked in front of my neighbors...well, mostly because I was practically in the buff.

Her eyes began to show the youthful sheen to them, and she threw her arms up in the air, and run about in the grass, her robe waving like a white flag in the wind. “This...this is what I live for, Steve! Nature! Natural things. The birds chirping. The hot cup of coffee. The dew upon the grass.”

I laughed. “And my albino body for all to see, young lady. Shouldn't I put on some clothes before I get arrested?” I tried to extrapolate.

She turned around, a daisy in her hand from my neighbor's garden, sans roots. “I've seen everyone in the buff. You were created to look like me, you know. So was your neighbor's kids, and his wife, and his cousins...we all share the same genes, you know. It's for a reason.”
Seeing myself and all the body hair to boot, I said “It's evolution, I guess. Shall I go and put some clothes on before someone mistakes me for a lower creature?” I muttered.

All of a sudden, her smile went away, as if I had said something wrong. “You're no revolution or happening of the random splicing of genes. You're someone special. I had to work almost a week to get you here, Steve. You know that, right?” She suddenly began to weep again, this time a little bit more intensely than before. “You just don't understand that I had you in mind, you, yourself.”

Boy, was I in a bind now. I couldn't explain it in words now, and probably didn't want to explain it anyways. She got upset by the littlest things, and I didn't know why. I guess I was that type of personality.

Taking a couple of glances (and folding my hands that my neighbor's prying eyes wouldn't see me,) I ran over to my neighbor's yard, going to consult this young visitor.

“Little girl, why are you crying again? My sense of humor isn't that bad, is it? Class clown I was back in 1971.” I tried everything to make this girl as happy as possible, but nothing was working.

Once again, I lifted her up and carried her over to my stoop. She tried to stop sobbing, but it was starting to affect her looks once again. She began to lose that youthful sheen in her face, and tiredness and angst began to show its effects on her physical self.

“You don't understand it, do you, Steve? That really hurt. I had to put myself through that when I was little. People used to say to me that my Dad and Mom were monkeys, my kids were monkeys, gorillas, and whatever. Painful, painful.” I wiped a tear from her face, and tried to console her even more this time.

“Look, I'm not that stupid. I don't eat bananas or pose for cameras all day. Look...I even shaved last night!” Rubbing my hand up and down the five-o-clock shadow I had (and was ashamed of it being touched by a woman at any rate), it seemed like the tears in her eyes began to vaporize, and a glow came through her eyes.

She smiled as the last tears ran down her face. A weak voice trembled, “Thank....you.” Getting up from the stoop, the girl now stepped back in the house. “I need some rest now. Traveling this distance makes me extremely weary.” And with that, she became as limp as a noodle, caroming into my arms.

Now, I was in a predicament. Somehow, I was going to have to sneak my not-so-gorgeous body indoors without making a scene. And there was a young woman in my arms. And the biggest thing I worried about was the fact that my neighbor walked right out the door.

“My...my flowers! What happened to them?” he yelled through the early morning air. “My beautiful posies! And daisies! My petunias! What happened?” He got down on his knees and combed the soil with his fingers.

I prayed that he wouldn't turn around.
Don't turn around....don't turn around....don't turn around....

But he did...sheesh. “Steve? Did you see anything?” my neighbor yelled across the driveway. “Who damaged my lovely babies?”

I felt the intense urge to lie about it, but somehow the fact that lying about it was going to cause much more severe consequences, I had to tell the truth. But it was a weird – and intense – feeling that was coming over me. It felt like some voice was coming through my soul to say “Tell the truth, Steve. No ill in it.” But the girl still had the flower in her hand, too.”

Sighing, the words flew right out of my mouth. “My, my strange girl here, she walked in my door. She went...and involuntarily went into your garden. She...” I handed him the flower, now derooted and cut to the cemetery standard - “she took your flower here. I don't know who she is, neighbor...” But he had his look go from sadness to puzzlement to anger.

He could not hold it back anymore. “She took my flower! You and your ill friend, get out of here! I'm calling the police!” He made a fist, and with that, I put the girl down.

I felt the intense urge to go and defend my honor against this man, to prove to this young lady that I was not a fool or a weakling, and as I put her down in the grass, I felt the person I had once entrusted my kids to watch, kick me in the chest and elbow me in the back, knocking me onto the ground.

“Don't ever touch my flowers again.”
I muttered back “Go and burn, you ganached gardener. Burn in the deepest of deep.” With that, I rolled over, only to find the girl who was young, look extremely old.

My neighbor walked in his house, and left me on my front lawn with the girl, now looking older every second. Her hair began to turn gray, her hands shriveled and skin wrinkled, and her eyes began to turn into a deep hue of crimson.

She spoke. “You...you have made me weary, Steve. You have made me unhappy, very unhappy. And very, very, weary....” And with that, she passed out.

Now, I was in even deeper trouble. My neighbor hated me, someone probably called my bare rear on the cops, and this girl was passed out beside me, looking as if I had dipped her in acid.

“Damn!” I yelled, the voice echoing throughout the neighborhood. “DAMN!”

As I turned over, I expected the now old-woman to be there. But she was gone, and now only a shadow was there. I didn't know where she went or how she moved, but she was gone. With that, I prayed that somehow, this dream would be over.

I clenched my fists and tried to close my eyes.
But instead, I woke up, at 2:00 AM, with my eyes wide open, my wife right beside me, staring at a dark, night-light lit ceiling.

And then, I felt like I should go and fold my hands again, so I could right this wrong....

But, could I?

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