Parker Thomas - Part I

Part I - The Orbs

Parker Thomas was a liar. He knew he was a liar, and the girl in the passenger seat of his car knew he was a liar. The two of them couldn't seem to decide who was going to say something about it first.

Dinner had been wonderful that Friday, just like it was wonderful the Friday before that, and the one before that. In fact, every Friday was dinner at their favorite sushi restaurant in the southern suburbs of Chicago, a treat for getting through the week, with the exception of one.

Two weeks earlier, Parker Thomas was at the sushi restaurant, like always, but not with the girl he sat two feet from just then. The girl sitting in his car just then he shared an apartment, a bed, and even a dog with. With the girl he ate with two weeks ago, he just shared a bed.

He had told the girl in his car some nonsense about being forced to stay late at the accounting firm that he worked for, having to finish up his papers and attend a teleconference with a company in Japan whom his firm represented. She knew it was bullshit almost as soon as he did.

Sadie Parker never finished college, and made her living as a photographer. She had met the liar Parker Thomas at a bar 2 years earlier at the college she didn’t finish and had bonded with him over the way they shared a name, and since then gave him two of the best years of her life, and now she hated him for it. She hated him from the top of his brown haired head, all through his pale skinny body, down to the worn out flip flops that sat on the floor while he drove barefoot.

Parker Thomas, on the other hand, loved Sadie Parker, from the first strand of strawberry blonde hair on her head, over every inch of self-designed ink on her body, down to her slender soft legs; he especially loved her legs. He firmly believed that she loved him back, right up until the moment when he noticed a shining, solitary tear rolling gently down her cheek. He knew almost as soon as she did what was coming next.

The words came flowing like a torrent of water unleashed from a dam filled to bursting. He promised he could explain, but she explained it all for him. The liar, the cheater, the rotten lying cheating bastard. He begged her to listen to him, he grasped her hand, and he promised he could explain everything if she would just give him a moment to speak.

He told her he loved her.

She told him she didn't.

The silence would have gone on forever after if it hadn't been for the stop sign; the screeching tires Parker Thomas couldn't hear over the roaring silence.

Not until the pick-up truck connected with his door.

Parker Thomas’ world completed its destruction right there and then. He saw two blinding orbs of light as they collided with him, and threw him through the air, hurtling, almost flying. He could feel his body moving through space completely free of any attachment, all the while the two orbs of light remaining fully illuminated against the black sky, never changing size or shape.

Next came the ground. He could feel the cold dew on the grass as he hit, knocking every ounce of air out of his lungs, and he slid until he came to a stop in the damp weeds. His head was throbbing, and he was able to lift it one last time long enough to look up and see the two orbs of light hovering massive in the black sky out in front of him, illuminating him in an island of light in the darkness. Next thing he knew, the lights faded from his vision, and Parker Thomas was unconscious.

“You should have seen the sign… Oh, why couldn't you have just seen the sign?” Her voice sang to him, almost mockingly.

He recognized the voice through his grogginess. Parker Thomas opened his eyes, letting in the bright, white morning light.

“Shit, Sadie, are you really going to keep this up right now?” He asked. A moment later he remembered the crash, flying, landing, and falling out of his mind. “Holy shit, are you okay?!” He sat up abruptly and blinked in the bright light.

As his eyes adjusted, he froze. He was sitting on a green, grassy knoll with a vast landscape of trees and mountains extending out before him. As his pupils adjusted further, he saw that the extra light came from a second blazing star in the sky, both fixed together and burning bright, like the headlights that threw him through the air the night before.

He heard footsteps and leaned back to look up and meet the bright blue eyes hovering over him. Sadie bent over him, hands on her knees, smiling, with shocks of hair rolling down over her shoulders. He blinked in the light and saw that she was different.

The woman bending over him against the azure sky was Sadie, but she had bright red hair instead, and before he knew what was happening, two massive shadows erupted from behind her, shading him momentarily as they did.

Sadie had two massive, feathered wings on her back, stretching out to either side in a bizarre display of limbering the unearthly appendages up as a bird would do before taking flight.

He was speechless. She knew he was speechless, so she just smiled wider, her hair changing to a dull golden hue. She stood upright, folded her wings behind her back, and sat down on a waist-high stone a few feet in front of Parker Thomas.

He struggled to find the words, but soon they tumbled out of his mouth.

“Is this heaven?”

She looked down at her own hands clasped between her thighs as if debating what to say. Without looking up, she let out a sigh, smiled, and then shook her head slowly, her hair fading to a navy blue.

“No.”