Buzz Magazine

    In the desolation of January you can find an odd malevolence around you. As the city sleeps the frozen tundra that has descended from the heavens feels like a blanket covering the cold exteriors and steel facades.

    I love the night. The night never judges me and the night never shouts. There are only whispers of the wind floating through the alleys telling me to move along.

     I need this peace. If society would understand I would be nocturnal. It may be false sense of security, my form of escapism, but that's fine. Some drink, some smoke, I walk in my city and observe the oddities that seem to give me focus and clarification.

     I'd never needed a walk like tonight. When I have a bad day a ten minute walk will suffice, when my father died I needed a few hours, but tonight.... tonight was special.

     I met my wife some nine years ago. I was a junior in college and she a senior in high school. I had come home for the weekend and my friends who never seemed to leave a quarter-mile radius of the town insisted that I tag along to one of the high school house parties. This was a prospect that I didn't particularity relish, I had not been the school quarterback or for that matter part of anything at all and I always felt that to be a period of anxiety and forced socializing with people who frankly, well they were assholes.

     And the party as a whole lived up to my imagination with stunning accuracy. I could have written a review of the party in advance properly worded and ready for Teen People. My sarcasm aside it ended up being what to this day I thought to be the most significant moment of my life. When your child is born, the day you're married. These are products of the root and that root is that first moment you lay eyes on the one you love.

     She was sitting in the corner on this seventies plush couch clutching a cup with not a drop drank out of it. In my mind I must have stared at her for hours and yet she remained oblivious. But I had to escape my shy nature, at least this once.

     I may not have “loved” her at first sight but I knew she was something special. Her brown hair was smooth as silk and flowed down her, shining in the dim lamp light. She wore a gold band in her hair that made her appearance breach the angelic. She looked like Audrey Hepburn in her prime with the most gentle of features. But it was her eyes. When I sat down and she finally looked right at me she captured a part of my soul. It was as if she looked not at me but thru me. Her eyes were hazel green but bright as the sun. You could see layer upon layer of different texture. Her stare struck me cold. And yet out of this goddess, this angel of beauty, came the simplest of greetings. “Hi.”

     And so it goes and so it went that two years later I graduated and we were married.

     The cold does not bother me. Sometimes the cold can be a reminder, a smack on the face, a friendly voice saying, “Hey, you're alive. Now suffer.” To me this is a great thing. Every whip of the wind against my face buries a thought. I've often wondered if the people of the middle ages had it simpler. “I've seen the way you look at her.” would be replaced by “I really hope one of these kids makes it, we need another hand.” It is as if technology has robbed us of our basic function, to strive for the staples of life. Now we just get bored.

     It was oddly bright outside. The moon reflected off the mounds of snow with a powerful glare. At one point I even stood next to a homeless man and his garbage bonfire and appreciated the view. We didn't say much to each other. He asked me why I was out, why wasn't I in my cozy condominium? I simply looked at him and I said “Because it isn't fair.”

     At this he grinned and laughed his toothless laugh. He grabbed my shoulder and yelled at me right in my ear, “What fuckin' moron told you life was fair!?” We stood a moment longer, words no longer necessary, I could hardly teach this man about misery and I had received my lesson from him. And so we stood hours until we could see the sun climbing slowly over the drifts. I felt a serenity come over me and I knew it was time to go home.

     I loved this woman. I loved her with a ferocity I'd previously thought impossible. When we laid in bed I stared at her, as I slept I dreamt of her and when I awoke I adored her. I have so much love to give and I would have given more everyday. And perhaps that is my problem, that my love cannot be matched.

     I could see the light under the door which only added to my anticipation. Of course she was in there, of course she was sitting on the couch quiet and reserved in the upward fetal position, head buried ever so neatly between the knees. Its one of those moments where you know exactly what you are walking into, when you have prepared and done all the mental gymnastics you could stomach. And yet you have nothing.

     She did look beautiful. At that moment when I opened the door I felt she had never looked so gorgeous in her life. Her sorrow was illuminating and I felt, if for only a moment, enchanted. I walked behind the couch around to her side and sat in the plush leather chair facing her. Only a coffee table between me and the woman I thought was my life. I dared not speak, I could only look with a blind curious stare. She removed her head from her knee and struggled through a barrage of tears to utter her plea.

     “I love you. I love you with every fiber of my body. In the morning I see the day as an obstacle to our reunion, and at night I see sleeping as a deprivation of our consciousness. I have been weak and I know this but you have been the only thing that has kept me going. Please, I beg of you to give me a second chance. Give US a second chance.”

     I paused. This moment is what I had thought about in one manner or another all night. My hand gripped the doorknob and my palms became slippery with the sweat of nervous anticipation. Than I turned my head ever so slightly, barely catching her silhouette in the corner of my eye and muttered softly under my breath, “The only second chance in life is the chance to make the same mistake twice.”

   And with that I turned my back on her and allowed a piece of my soul to return to the abyss from whence it came.

Life Cycle is a thrilling supernatural adventure with a paranormal twist that asks and answers the question "What if dreams do come true?"

Dan Shoe, a thirty-something Midwesterner, awakens late one night having dreamed the exact year and day of his death: May 5, 2027. His newfound ability or curse leads him on a quest to explain how and why he dreams and envisions future events and otherworldly images--events and images that one-by-one unfold correctly, leading up to the fateful day he once dreamed. Dan’s journey begins with dreams and visions of the future, leads into the tangled webs of life, transcends into newfound enlightenment, and ends with what may be the afterlife, culminating in an otherworldly blizzard of events on May 5, 2027.

Pick up a copy this season. Dream beyond the ordinary.

To buy the book immediately, click this link and get ready for a "deep" read.

www.unlimitedpublishing.com/ferguson