She shouldn’t be able to see it, see anything, out here in the farthest reaches, the sun’s rays straining to stand apart from other pinpricks in night’s ebon curtain, but there it is: a looming eldritch world, spinning in the void, reflecting back porphyry shades like a bruise on space-time’s flesh. She glides towards it, diaphanous wings, aloft on solar winds, answering a summons she shouldn’t be able to hear in vacuum, cacophony of countless buzzing trills, a swarm given sentience, calling her home. Home, a place of vast non-Euclidean cities and moist alien angles, warmed by deep volcanism and living technologies older than the sun, where she can be free, belong. Down she tumbles, down, wings tucked back, spread wide, tucked back again, twisted and folded, hugging Home’s gravity, savoring the cold embrace of its artificial atmosphere, towards the Caves of Life, where the first spores were planted, eons past, upon this world that welcomed them from beyond vast gulfs. The Caves loom before her, monstrous maw ready to swallow her whole, but she ignores her human terror, born of reptile brain, embraces alien yearning, soars on into wet, welcoming, trilling darkness. And then…

…Tricia wakes up from the strange dream, squints at sunlight blinding her through a gap in the curtains, nuzzles the warm body next to her, an old punk rock song at low volume through her second-hand lime-green iPod’s dangling earphones –-

/cuz it makes me sick to think of every cage/

-- and wonders, again, what the fuck it means. She’s had the dream before, but only since she moved here, as far away from Pensacola as her beat-up shit-can of a car could take her, and changed her identity. The dream can’t possibly have anything to do with Jake and his fists, or Mom and her denial, urging Tricia to stay with Jake like she did with Dad, blaming Tricia for both men’s rage. No, this dream is something else, like it belongs to someone else.

Fuck it. Tricia clings to the old song, loyal friend --

/and it makes me sick to think of life wasting away!/

-- and moves to turn the sound up loud enough to rattle her skull, when, last second, the alarm clock rattles it instead. She hits the iPod’s pause button, kills the clock’s buzzing trill, so much like her dream-call. The warmth beside her squirms and snuffles, blissful sleep-visions of running in open fields, chasing rabbits.

Six-thirty, damn it. Rita, kindred soul, will be here to pick her up in two hours. Plenty of time, if Tricia moves right now. She doesn’t. Sleep, that friend as loyal as an old song, reaches out again for her, no judgment, no blame. It’s just a crap job in a lost hick town, anyway. And Miss Sally, understanding matron, only hired her to fend off the loneliness of old age. She’ll forgive. She always does. Sleep, loving sleep…

Someone is licking her now, fat, heavy tongue smothering half her face, nothing like a lover. Kibble-breath, beseeching paws, hungry whines, ears perked, hindquarters wagging for lack of tail, Tricia’s best friend, more loyal than song or sleep, the warm body that was right next to her seconds before.

“Gandhi. Good boy, Gandhi. Mommy’s up now.”

The grey and white pit bull, most loving creature she’s ever known, undeserving, like most, of its kind’s nasty rep, bounds out of bed and out the room, barking anticipation, scratching at kibble bowls beyond.

Time for breakfast. Tricia sighs again, the morning ritual begun. This is my new life, kiddo. The new me. Why can’t I get used to it?

The new ritual goes like this: a vegan breakfast with Gandhi gobbling organic kibble at her feet, then a four-mile run with Gandhi on his leash, gleefully pissing and sniffing and shitting at every turn, challenging other dogs unseen but daily smelled, endless game of canine Risk. Back to the three-room house she rents for barely less than she makes at Miss Sally’s Flower & Garden Emporium, for a shower and long, forlorn, primping gazes at her mirror-self, once-green hair that matched her eyes buzzed short to dark brown roots, finally growing into something manageable. She was beautiful once, exotic punk rock goddess in plaid skirts and thigh-high pleather boots over fishnets, sporting skin-tight T-shirts of some band or other. Conventional now, right down to her neatly pressed blouses and pleated khaki work pants, facial piercings grown closed, scars covered by make-up she wouldn’t have worn back home (all grown up, comes Mom’s voice from somewhere, and a part of Tricia, consigned, agrees). After all that, time permitting, she tinkers with her shit-can car, 1984 Honda Civic hatchback, navy blue, engine deader than disco, rear bumper and door plastered with slogan stickers (Vegan For Life!, Love Animals, Don’t Eat Them!, Punish The Deed, Not The Breed), until Rita shows up to drive her to work at Miss Sally’s, dishing about men-as-dogs on the way.

It’s boring and lonely, ennui-inducing (except for Gandhi, lovely loving Gandhi, unconditional), but all she has to do is remember that this is escape from Jake and his fists, Mom and her denial and blame, and the new routine, the new Tricia, is almost worth it. Almost.

Rita is late today. So Tricia skips the engine work and waits on her tiny porch, cool breeze on a spring morning, plopped on the stairs, Gandhi caged up inside the house, whining for release. When she closes her eyes, she can almost hear the buzzing dream-trills again, alien yearning, a swarm given sentience. Almost.

######

She hears buzzing again that day, just after the screams.

“Oh Godjesusfuckinghell, kill it!” Rita squirms and thrashes about the showroom, mindless mosh-pit moves, dodging sprites, rattling the fern aisle, a Cretaceous rain forest trembling under megafaunal strides. “Kill it!”

Something buzzes past Tricia when she comes running from the store room to help, then circles her head, tiny living moon, trilling in orbit. Tricia freezes in place, trying to find bearings.

“Pay it no never mind, darling,” says Miss Sally, gliding out of her office, Scarlett O’Hara as octogenarian. “It’s just a little honey-bee.”

“I hate bees,” Rita says, her breath returning. “I’m allergic.”

Tricia smiles. “They’re more scared of you, Rita. And violence only makes it worse. See?”

The bee hovers in Tricia’s face, satellite examining brave new worlds, fuzzy yellow and black astronaut. She can almost see its tiny head cock to the side, curious, multi-focal eyes reflecting her back a hundred-fold.

“It’s harmless, once it knows you are.”

Tricia empties her water cup into a potted fern, lifts it gently up, rim facing her tiny new friend. The bee buzzes forward a little, then back, as Tricia follows, eyes locked.

“Come on, I won’t hurt you.”

Rita and Miss Sally stand awe-struck, admiring, as the bee glides into Tricia’s clear plastic cup and stays there when she lowers the rim against the floor, temporarily trapping the insect, invisible walls. The bee doesn’t seem to mind.

Tricia rips a sheet from her shirt-pocket notebook, slides it between floor and cup, then turns the whole structure upright. The bee tumbles, takes flight, bumps gently against the new wood-pulp roof, held firm by Tricia’s palm. Still trapped, and only slightly agitated.

“Told you,” Tricia declares, proud of another lesson taught to Rita, new friend so full of misplaced anger.

Tricia strides past her co-workers and heads for the newly-installed automatic glass doors of the Flower & Garden Emporium, cup and bee balanced between hands, tattooed wrists.

Whoosh! of soothing spring air when the doors rush open, spilling sunlight on her face. She closes her eyes to savor the wind massage, scent of new life even out here on the blacktop parking lot, lancing through fumes of gas and oil from customer cars.

The paper comes off the cup, and Tricia hears, feels, the honey bee fly free, fly towards Home’s welcoming caves…

…and she senses him, somehow, before even seeing him, or smelling or hearing or anything else, through the deep psychic connection to life’s web she’s never told anyone about, the reason she’s a vegan, all the world’s pain sensed if she opens up enough. Shivers of arousal rattle her spine, prickle her skin, quiver her loins.

When she opens her eyes, he is everything and nothing she expects. The most beautiful man she has ever seen, just there, mere paces away, loading bags of potting soil into his sparkling Land Rover. Long muscles glisten, sin-dark hair sweat-sticks to a delicate, almost feminine, brow that tops ice-blue eyes; lithe grace of a dancer and warrior born, no trace of body fat, serpentine arms ending in poet’s hands.

Too bad he’s dressed like a redneck; he was born to be Goth. But she can fix that.

No, that’s how it started with Jake, restraint cast to the wind, slave to instinct, and with all the other bad boys who turned out to be very bad men. Not this time, no matter how luscious he is. No matter how much the life-web thrums around him.

“Excuse me, miss, are you alright?” Buttery baritone Georgian accent oozes out from between succulent lips, atop his chiseled jawline. She almost swoons; how damned Southern of her.

“I’m sorry?” she stammers.

He steps close, genuine concern, ice-blue eyes locked on her emerald greens. “You seem… flummoxed. Are you OK?”

“I’m fine, fine. A little dizzy, is all. Low blood sugar, I guess.”

“Well, please, sit down.” He takes her gently by her wrist with one hand, the other resting silk-soft against her lower back, two erogenous zones at once – goddamn he’s good – and leads her to the bed of his Land Rover. She leans to keep from swooning amongst towers of potting soil in his cab.

A caressing hand on her shoulder now, ice-blue gazing again into emerald green, as he hands her a bottle of Gatorade. “You’re sure you’re alright, miss…?”

“Winstead. Tricia Winstead.” Coquettish blinks, a toss of her cropped hair, in spite of herself. The life-web vibrates between them, almost audible, reality’s sub-woofer.

He offers a poet-hand in greeting, and she takes it, demure and sleazy all at once. “My name’s Jason Crane. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Winstead.”

Fingertips brush against her palm as he pulls his hand away. The life-web quivers. Somewhere, far away in the back of her mind, she can almost hear a buzzing trill.

“Pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Crane. I must say, that’s an awful lot of potting soil.”

“Well, I have a lot of work ahead of me. It’s for my night garden.”

“Night garden?”

“I cultivate night-blooming plants. Lots of them.”

“Well, let me help you.”

“Thank you, darling. And please, call me Jason.”

She helps him load the soil, savors the rhythm they create together, working silently, sweatily, psychic foreplay, life-web thrumming. She could swear he feels it, too.

When they’re done, there’s another soft, slightly-dirty hand on her shoulder, his other taking both of hers by the fingertips, ice-blues meeting emerald greens once more.

“I’m much obliged for the help, Tricia. May I call you Tricia? Without you, it’d have taken me twice as long to load.”

“Just doing my job, Jason.”

He nods, knowing a polite, seductive lie when he hears it. “I’m in your debt. Maybe you could suggest a nice place for me to buy you dinner. Just to square our accounts.”

She giggles, even though it’s not that funny.

“I wish I could, but I’m pretty new around here.” Shit, it’s happening again. She doesn’t even want to stop anymore. “Maybe you have a place in mind?”

“Sadly, I’m new, too. I guess I’ll just have to be a little bold. My place, tomorrow night? I’m a positively wicked chef.”

Pure, calming confidence, no taste of danger, no klaxons in the life-web, just the right dash of mystery. She realizes she needs this, needs to move on.

“Where did you say you live?”

“The Creed House, in the hills north of town. Somehow, I recently inherited it.”

And she finds herself nodding, nostrils flaring, taking in his earthy man-scent, dominant above the moist aroma of potting soil and the sour stink of parking-lot fumes.

“You know how to find it? Great! Come by around six o’clock, and I’ll give you the full tour.”

A squeeze of the hands, another lingering ice-blue gaze, and he’s off without a word, gravel popping beneath Land Rover wheels, leaving her, at last, to swoon.