Jayne Just Watches--an excerpt

Today is my favorite kind of day ... I don't have to be anywhere, so I can write. Later, I'll probably ride my bike around. 

Not my bike, but I like it

Here's a short excerpt from the novel I'm working on, Jayne Just Watches: 

Chapter One: Just Jayne

I’m dead.

Trapped inside this body—walking, talking, eating, sleeping—so you might assume I’m alive, but I’m not. My heart stopped beating several years ago.

Even though I’m dead, there are two things I like to do: oil painting and visiting the cemetery. Also, I love sleeping … guess that’s three.

You ever have the feeling that you’re dreaming when you’re awake? Like you’re moving through water, the air feels heavy, sounds seem distant. Maybe you’re shopping, or walking along a sidewalk, or working, when you notice you’re not really there.

That’s how it feels to be dead.

At night, when I lie down, you may think I’m sleeping, but I’m really traveling through other realms. It’s almost like dreaming, but more intense. That’s when I feel almost alive.

See that maple tree out in the courtyard?

What color are the leaves? 

You’ll probably say green, but I see gray. Most things in my world are gray, mixtures of black and white, some lighter, some darker. Gray is neutral, achromatic, so it refracts light without dispersing. It’s not really a color. The only color I perceive is red. No blue. No yellow. Just shades of red. It’s a rare condition called Tritanopia, brought on by trauma to the head and exacerbated by anxiety.

But when I’m traveling (you would call it dreaming) I see spectrums of color you’ve never imagined. If I were dreaming now, the leaves on that maple tree would be a thousand variations of green. The underlying leaves gloomy and bluish, others dappled yellow by the sun, some tender green as baby shoots, and others as ghostly as the moon. If I were dreaming, chocolate shadows would play along the tree's trunk, and sunlight would break through the branches, painting the bark silver.

But now, sitting on my balcony and painting (as I often do), all I see is gray.

My condominium is like a treehouse. My apartment is on the second story and the balcony parallels the branches of the maple tree. Beyond the maple, there’s a stand of aspen, a blue spruce, two pinion pines, and a crabapple tree on the edge of the play area--swings, a sandbox, slide and jungle gym. My balcony shares a common wall and railing with the neighboring condo. That apartment has been vacant for a while, ever since the Navajo family (who never said hello) departed last March. 

I spend a lot of time out here, watching my neighbors as they come and go down in the courtyard. The complex houses college students, several artists and writers, a few retirees, and a number of young families. That strange woman, Sadie, lives directly across from me—one of the few residents I know by name, only because she introduced herself. Through the maple leaves, I see her dragging a heavy bag of garbage down the stairway of her condo. She glances in my direction, and I duck behind the canvas I’ve set on my easel.

She waves, calls out, “Hi, Jayne. How’s it hangin’?”

When I peek around the canvas, she grins.

Her lipstick is as red as blood, so is her hair.

She yells across the courtyard, “Killer day!”

Using a pallet knife (dull edges so it can't do any damage), I mix black paint into the gray and pretend I don’t hear her.

Today’s stark sun and barren sky depress me. I prefer the soft focus of overcast, clouds brooding over the mountains, thunder rumbling through the valley. Give me the ozone scent of rain, a downpour pelleting the roof, mist rising from the pavement and engulfing the courtyard.

Shielding my eyes from the sun’s glare, I watch Sadie maneuver a trash bag along the walkway that encircles the courtyard. The bag oozes something reddish, deposits wet markings on the cement. She lugs it to the parking lot and disappears from view behind the building, no doubt headed to the dumpster.

She goes there a lot.

I pull my explorer telescope out of the pocket of my skirt, point the lens at her picture window. Can't see a thing, except drawn curtains. Last night I watched Sadie and this college kid going at it, but I never saw him leave. 

This complex is fairly small and a bit old-fashioned, which I like. Sixteen two-story buildings surround the courtyard, four condominiums in each building. The structures are made of wood (rather than cement like the new ones they built down the road), paint flaking on the sides exposed to the sun. The lights, set at corners of the courtyard, are Victorian in style—globes reminiscent of gaslight. Wisteria overhangs the common area which houses mail boxes, a picnic table, and several plastic chairs. Victorian houses abound in this town, built in the late 1800's when people rushed to Colorado hoping to make fortunes mining gold and silver. The Denver & Rio Grande Railway lay narrow gauge tracks that climb through treacherous mountain passes from here to the old mining town of Silverton. The steam engine still runs, but these days it carries tourists. 

I’m into steampunk, so the town suits me.

I design book covers (steampunk, horror, vampire, zombie apocalypse) for indie authors I meet on Facebook and Twitter. The covers provide me with enough income to scrape by—along with the meager trust my parents left me.

They died in the accident fourteen years ago, so did Lexi. Me too, but they brought me back to life … anyway, that’s what the doctors said.

On my next birthday, ten days from now when I turn twenty-six, I’ll come into my full inheritance. Growing up, Aunt Elizabeth always told me it’s substantial. She says I’m a lucky girl.

Lucky stiff.

LOL.

I’d rather have my family.

What am I working on?

When you look at this canvas, what do you see? Wisps of gray, some flickering with light, others shadowy, some mysteriously black. If you stare at the painting long enough, images appear ….

See that shimmer rippling through the painting?

Nothing in this world is solid, even if it appears concrete. Our bodies contain more space than matter. According to scientific findings, five sixths of matter is dark and invisible. Particles of dark matter pass through our bodies all the time, colliding with our atoms. Who can say what else passes through the collection of molecules you call you and I call me?   

How do we know dark matter exists, if it can’t be detected? 

Gravitational pull.

Dark matter may be invisible, but it affects things surrounding it, sucking them in with its dark energy. Ghosts are like that too, so are demons. You may call them by another name, but all kinds of entities exist in space and on other planes.

I feel them passing through my body, playing in my mind.

Sometimes I see them.

Red eyes shining in the dark.

I paint them, so they’re apparent.

A parent, that’s funny.

More than my parents, I miss Lexi. She was seven. We were in the back seat of my dad’s new Lincoln … black leather seats, snowflakes hitting the windshield, the slosh of icy water beneath the tires as the car hit Park Avenue. It was my job to make sure my little sister buckled up, but Lexi hated seatbelts, said they made her feel trapped.

Her death was my fault.

Did you catch that movement, at the edge of the canvas?

The flash of red eyes.

Demons are sneaky, appear at the periphery of your vision, vanish when you glance directly at them. Sometimes they slip behind the painting and poke the canvas with their fingernails.  

I survived the crash, sort of—died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but they managed to revive me. TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury, due to sudden impact. Doctors claim my recovery was a miracle. No matter what they claim, I’m really dead. My psychiatrist says I’m suffering from Cotard’s Delusion (also known as the Walking Dead Syndrome), but how can a corpse be diagnosed?

I’m done with shrinks. I need a Coroner.

What use are doctors who want to analyze me and prescribe pills to make me normal? Normal is a syndrome not worth suffering. I enjoy being dead, enjoy the unique perspective. Being dead allows me to detach from anger, pain, sadness … all those messy emotions.

I lost my heart four years ago—it stopped beating, gave up when Jonathan left me. I met him in college. Things may have ended differently if I had let him touch me, but dead people don’t have sex. The idea is repulsive. Isn't it?

When he went back to Denver, my heart collapsed, left this cavity inside my chest.

Now my brain is rotting.

Ever smell a rotting brain? Think chicken guts left in the trunk of a car for a week, dead rats decomposing in the walls of your house, putrefying poopy diapers forgotten in the garbage. The stink lingers, gets inside your nostrils, your clothing, your hair, your mind. When your brain’s decaying in your skull, it’s impossible to ignore the stench. I've tried everything: dog shampoo designed to eliminate odors, essential oils, breathing through my mouth. I can taste the stink. Vic’s Vapor Rub on my upper lip works best. (That’s what cops use.)

I get these headaches, throbbing pain inside the black hole of my skull.

Speaking of black holes, they’re not really empty space. Quite the opposite. According to NASA, black holes are extremely condensed matter. NASA says, “Think of a star ten times more massive than the Sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York City.” This creates a gravitational pull so intense that nothing can escape, not even light. Black holes are the vampires of the universe, sucking energy out of nearby stars and destroying them. The problem is, black holes are invisible and you won’t know you’re near one, until it’s devoured you.

That’s what happened to me. A black hole sucked the energy right out of me, and now I’m stuck with this body.

You may be saying, “If you’re dead, why don’t you commit suicide?”

There’s no point in committing suicide if you’re already dead. I’m an illusion, a specter. I don’t really exist. Experience is subjective, perceived through the muddy filters of our psyches. Reality is a consensus of opinion, a group delusion. Trust only mathematics, the laws of physics and chemistry. Above all else, don’t trust yourself or other people.

That's what Aunt Elizabeth taught me.

Especially, never trust a man.