by Dana Jerman

Kasei Faunworth stood at her soon-to-be-discarded dresser in the early evening, fresh from the shower after finishing her final shift. Picking up her plane ticket for the umpteenth time, the smile growing wide. Hard to fathom the ride would be in a few hours. She was nearly levitating. Feeling herself being pulled from the ground by the force of jet engines, already in flight.

Right next to the ticket was the little plaque. It fit across her palm. A cheap and heartfelt declaration of her commitment to the hotel kitchen she’d sweated and bled and cried and toe-stubbed and bruised and burnt herself in and through, countless times over, for the past seven years. The sheer recall of all the faces and friendships she would miss brought instant tears to her eyes.

The wood and brass plaque represented her first and last time being named employee of the month. 

Chen stepped around her feet in a self-same gesture of anticipatory affection. Out of character for him, but as cats go, he was more stupid than mercurial, and this quality had endeared her to him for over eight years. She scooped him and nuzzled him for a moment while he looked questioningly back out into the near empty room. She knew he wouldn’t like the trip. But the vet was already lined up on the other end and so was a new crop of acquaintances, each anticipating her arrival after a long and deliciously restless journey.

Approaching dusk, the lights from Space Coast- an alien beach party themed casino she lived twelve blocks from- glittered unabashedly into her front room. Commanding a distance between just close enough and just far enough away. The best vantage from which to observe dreams. The going-away shindig for her would be there tonight at the ZAP Bar. 

Time to celebrate. When she got into the autodriver, as if on cue The Liquidations came on the radio with the first song she’d heard when she came into town. She still didn’t know the title, but made a note to look it up as she asked the drive console to turn it up. The lyrics in the chorus were great:

You were right all along/ The poison is the cure…

Take me west now/ Give me switchbacks and a grade…

Frantic and alive/ But I’ll soon fade/ In the fog over Vegas…

Her head tilted back onto the headrest and she felt out of herself for a minute. All blissed and used up. Adrift in the cool delight of the cab. Shadows smoothing rays beyond the glow down all around her, glittering over makeup and her soft blue stare.

Everything about the strange start was beginning to melt away in a heated haze of electric days that revealed such promise. So very warm at the bottom of the world. This warmth and heat like lavender and chocolate. It crawled up over your neck and saturated you, bringing you into and down, down towards velvety suffocation…

Mom finishes her kung pow chicken and finds no fortune in the cookie. Then the labor pains kick in all over her like an other worldly chain reaction of earthquakes that will not be stopped. She gives birth right there in the food court. Kasei is a fresh reality.

When the intrepid traveller brought her head up and opened her eyes, bright blue met mile high horizon. The aircraft had just achieved 20,000 feet.