Snowscape Trilogy Read online

  Snowscape Trilogy

  By Jessie Lyn Pizanias

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2014

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  Book 1

  Amy

  Chapter 1

  The snow was falling softly around me covering the streets in an unblemished white, glistening blanket. It was so impeccably silent that I could hear the snowflakes landing on soft piles and settling themselves into their fate. As I walked forward the street lamp in front of me cast a soft yellow glow across the whole serene landscape. I could hear the river close by and its lapping current hurrying on toward the falls downstream.

  Although the only light source was the single street lamp in front of me, the whole boulevard had the soothing white glow that accompanied any major snowfall. My surroundings were streaked with whites and silvers and greys. That’s why I noticed him standing there immediately. His dark black robe caught my attention in the way a blood smear on a crisp white shirt would have. He stood directly under the glowing lamp silently watching me as I took in the beautiful landscape that surrounded us.

  I walked forward hesitant in my step but confident in my purpose. This was my dream that he was invading. This was my world, my escape. He had no right to be there. I could hear my feet crunching the snow beneath me as I approached him and stopped. The silence became obtrusive. I could no longer hear the river as I stood silently in front of him.

  The black folds of his robe and hood looked velvet to the touch, soft, warm and inviting. I had the inexplicable urge to reach my hand out and caress it with the side of my fingers. I could feel my hand move slightly to do such, but hesitated before even a slight twitch. I could tell he was smiling about my internal struggle even without being able to see his face. Although I wanted to be angry, I knew this was a game we often played here. I knew he wanted to control me and although it frustrated him that he could not, he continually tried.

  I have been having dreams like this for as long as I could remember. He had yet to win one of our fights. But he kept trying and truth be told, I liked that he did.

  “Who are you?” I asked breaking the entrancing silence that surrounded us.

  He raised his head silently and I could see just the edge of his face peeking out at me behind his cowl. Before I had a second to breath, he was almost on top of me. I could feel the cold lamppost behind my back as he pressed against me and buried his face in my neck. I could feel his warm breath against my flesh and felt my body respond as the adrenaline coursed through my veins. His dark black hair brushed against the side of my cheek and I was taken aback with how much my body responded to him. Not by his will, but by my choice. I was still in total control of the situation that meant these decisions were mine to be made.

  We stayed like that for a few seconds. I didn’t want to move, to break this new interlude we had created. I could feel his harsh breaths next to my ear and feel his body against me quivering with indecision and need.

  He took both of my hands and wrapped them around his waist, leaning into me with all of his weight. The feel of him so close to me was intoxicating. I tried to turn my head and see his face, but he pushed against me harder and dug his chin into my crook of my neck so I couldn’t move. It was painful and amazingly provocative.

  He kissed my neck gently and pressed his mouth against my ear. “Stay away from him.”

  I woke up suddenly in my bed, covered in sweat and short of breath.

  Chapter 2

  Coffee. Coffee was always the key of starting a good day. That was my first thought as I rolled over in my cozy queen sized bed. I fingered the edge of the mattress peaking out from the corner where the sheets had started to come off in my thrashing about. I let the melancholy of the chill air on my face wake me up as I toyed with the new thoughts of my dream visitor. A smile played on my lips as I turned towards the source of the chill breeze. I had left my bedroom window open just a crack last night and was grateful for it as I rubbed the groggy sleep from my eyes.

  I smacked the alarm on my phone as it went off again but stayed looking up at the plain white ceiling that adorned my room. The only thing that I could call my own in the three-room apartment that I shared with one of my few friends. Alistair had his own bedroom on the other end of the apartment, but the hallway wasn’t long enough to keep out the subtle sound of him and his boyfriend giggling on the rare occasion that they actually came home. Resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be falling back asleep, I swung out of bed and jumped in the shower, but not before setting the coffee pot to brew in the kitchen. Time to start my day in the exciting career of supermarket associate.

  Freshly showered and sipping coffee, Alistair met me in the kitchen as I stared out the window onto the glistening streets of Olympia. It had just rained last night, my reason for leaving the window open. I loved the sound of a thunderstorm. “Bad dreams?” he asked startling me out of my melancholy.

  “You heard?”

  He grabbed two cups out of the cupboard and starting filling them with extra sugar. “Yes. You were loud enough to hear across the entire block. Maybe you should think about seeing someone. Get some pills. It can’t be normal for you to have nightmares like that every night.”

  I nudged the sugar out of reach. “Two spoonful’s is really enough, you know. Ted has given you his unhealthy habits.”

  “That’s not all he’s given me,” he said with a smirk as he kissed my cheek.

  “Nope.” I sighed and put my hand up before handing him back the sugar. “I don’t want any more details or bad jokes this early in the day please. I slept just fine.”

  He took a small sip, testing the sucrose content. “That’s not what it sounded like from my end. I’m just saying that maybe you should-”

  “I’m fine,” I said cutting him off. “I warned you before we moved in together that this might happen. I have a tendency to have very vivid dreams. And if we are bringing up noise complaints…”

  He raised both of his hand in defense and did a mock bow before I could elaborate, “Alright, you win.” He went back to his side of the apartment, a cup in both hands, but not before kissing my temple. “If you ever want to talk.”

  It was an open ended option that I had never taken advantage of. And probably never would.

  In my life as a cashier for Kellogg’s Grocery, I had always had secret hopes of a dashing stranger walking in and whisking me away from my monotonous life of paper or plastic. Alas, it had not happened yet so promptly at one o’clock I threw my hair into a lazy bun on my head and drove to work. Finding myself in charge of the ten items or less lane, I set about checking out the daily dose of customers bleeding in and out through the front doors. Time passes slowly while complacently bagging assortments of fruit and pastas. I spent that time silently musing away about my dark midnight stranger.

  I had always had very disturbing dreams. More often than not I found myself dreaming as someone else entirely and it would consistently involved some sort of traumatic event. I had dreamt of car accidents, diseases, death and bombing my whole life. Although vivid and disturbing, there was never a feeling of emotional attachment to any of the dreams. They were like movies, without context. But apparently I vocalized whatever emotion I hadn’t felt. Oh, and I have had dreams of the same man every night for as long as I could remember. I considered myself a little unbalanced compared to the normal individual. He was always there in the beginning
and in the end of every night for me. He would sometimes show me things but he usually spent the time watching, waiting, but never speaking. Not until last night when I was told to stay away from him. Him? Him who?

  A prickling sensation on the back of my neck broke me out of my reverie and made me look up. A man was looking in my direction over the magazine rack. A sharp jolt of electricity coursed through my nerves as he peered at me expressionless and I suddenly lost my breath for a moment.

  He carried a sense of familiarity about him but as I tried to picture him figuring into my past, his face became unfocused in my mind. The stranger was graced with pale features, thick grey tinted glasses and dark blonde hair that curled over his ear slightly brushing above his neckline. Wearing a faded dark blue jacket and black jeans that hung off of his nearly perfect frame, I could tell he was the type of man who took care of himself and spent a lot of time working out. He had a solid strong build that showed through the white T-shirt hiding just below the jacket. His overwhelming confidence was his most defining feature though. As he looked at me pursing his thin lips, I could see it radiating off of him in waves of heat and it gave me stark images of my dream stranger. This was an ability to take command that could not be learned.

  He made no qualms about starring at me though and within a moment’s notice I was slightly taken aback at the audacity of the situation, as he impertinently examined me from head to toe. The look on his face had a slight sense of wonder as if not believing I could be real.

  Not to be intimidated, I looked directly back at him careful to show no emotion. I was not the waifish girl to giggle and flirt and would be damned if he thought it was okay to look at me like an unmoving object. No red touched his cheeks in embarrassment and as our eyes matched through his glasses I could see his lips part in surprise for a moment before turning into a terse frown. He hadn’t expected for me to see him so quickly or to forcefully return his gaze. He seemed about to speak for a moment, but thought better of it. Without a second glance the man abruptly turned and walked away, pulling his cellphone out of his back pocket as he left the store. I quickly scanned around, but it had seemed that no one besides me noticed his odd behavior.

  I continued my shift without any other unusual occurrences, but covertly kept looking around to see if he had come back. To my slight dismay and equal part relief, he had not and I spent the rest of the day trying to remember where I knew him. The only familiarity came with the jolt I felt when I had seen him. It reminded me of a memory from a dream. The feeling of clarity when you awaken and the dream is fresh in your mind but the tide of emotions is still high. The further away you moved from the dream; however it faded into an unreachable memory and so had this stranger.

  Seeing as how I didn’t have a lot of promising entertainment to keep my mind occupied waiting for me in my three-room apartment, I tended to fill my days half up with work and the other half up with drinking. Alistair was a great friend and a great roommate, but he had his own life to lead. So fifteen minutes after the end of my shift I found myself sitting alone at a local dive called Blake’s. Blake’s was your typical small town Irish pub. They had a short array of deep fried goodness on their menu and a jut box that only played classic rock. The bar usually sported a small assortment of working class guys most nights. I knew a couple of the regular’s enough to nod my head, and avoid any sort of deep life affirming conversation with them on a regular basis. This was the type of bar that you went to drink silently alone and ponder the life that the almighty had given you. This was a bar to lament about lost love and lost fortunes to the thirty-five year old bartender who would quietly nod and slip you an extra shot on the house when he thought you might start getting too deep in the barrel of loneliness. Besides the occasional frat party that spilled over, this was the type of bar that someone could get lost in and to pretend if their life had meaning.

  As I squeeze in between the bar stool and the counter, Eric walked over and threw a coaster down in front of me. “What can I get for you today Amy?”

  I picked up the flimsy thing that sat silently on the bar mocking me. “Coasters? I thought this place was too good for cardboard?” referring to one of Eric’s most recent rants about advertisers taking over every surface of the world.

  Eric smirked and tossed it in the trash. “My Dad told me we can get an extra grand a month from coaster advertising. If you haven’t noticed the economic downturn may be over on Wall Street, but life hasn’t quite swung back to the norm here.” Eric was a fully-fledged master degree holding financial advisor that had once had big dreams of moving to Chicago or NY to work in the stock market. Unfortunately his father, Blake, had come down with lung cancer right before he had graduated and Eric, being the good son of a proud Irish American family had settled in to the fact that he would keep his father’s business afloat as long as the old man was still around to see it. He still played the stocks a bit online, but the excitement it had held in his youth had curtailed itself behind his focus on his father and only living relative’s health. Luckily the bar saw no end of steady business, since even in the worst of times people need somewhere to down cheap beer and liquor. Although their family wasn’t rolling in cash, they could afford to put food on the table and pay for Blake’s medical treatment, which was more than some people and why Eric was always on the lookout to help his father make a few extra bucks.

  “I’ll take a martini,” I said sweetly as I pulled my long brown tresses out of the bun and reestablished itself as a limp mess down my back. Eric turned without so much as a word and placed a bottle of Rainier and a shot of Jamison in front of me. “Thanks, Eric,” I said taking my beer and downing half of it in the first gulp.

  After my initial drink and the much-needed shot thanks to the untimely stranger today upsetting my nerves I settled back into my usual routine and started to sip my beer. Although I don’t consider myself an overly social creature, I do enjoy the company I find in a room full of people who would not judge me or feel the need to talk to me unnecessarily. My aunt had once told me that I was a loner and I took that more complimentarily than I think she had meant it, but it was true to the core. I didn’t relish the idea of being alone; however I always felt a sense of unease around most people. I am able to function and cordially deal with anyone on a day-to-day basis, but I did not talk about myself and I didn’t want questions asked of me. ‘Aloof’ was how my high school guidance counselor phrased it once in my permanent record. Aloof was the mantra of how I lived my life.

  Aloof like that man today.

  My mind took an unexpected turn back to the blond haired stranger I had seen earlier. I let me thoughts drift around him once again. I had already consciously decided that he must have mistaken me for someone else he knew and had probably realized the error by now. Something about the whole situation still tugged at my emotions though. His name was lingering on the tip of my tongue. With a heavy sigh, I realized that I would most likely never figure out this puzzle, much like other ones in my life, and decided to just let the matter go for now.

  Tonight was a slow night at Blake’s. At the bar sat Henry, a local postal worker, whose wife had left him six years ago and who had rare contact with his daughter who moved to Minnesota to work at a museum. At a table across the room sat Paula, pushing her usual wares onto a new and unsuspecting stranger. Paula was about sixty-five years old, never married, always on the rebound and tried to straddle any male that entered the tavern who even glanced her way. I always pictured her to be exactly what I would become in about 40 years: an unwanted woman whose main goal in life was to fuck around until finding someone to make her feel attractive and desired. Because of this I was always exceedingly nice to Paula and we had formed a bit of a bond over the last few months. With her latest conquest in sights, she didn’t even notice me come in today. I starred down at the bar for a moment and had Eric pour me a double shot of Whiskey.

  I felt the main entrance door open when the cool October breeze hit the back of my neck w
ith a chilling prickle. It was a pleasant contrast for a moment to the warm liquor pouring down my throat. I heard the unmistakable giggle of a twenty-year-old sorority girl come up next to me as Eric handed me my second beer. You have to appreciate a bar tender that knows his clientele.

  “What’s good here?” she asked no one in particular setting herself down on the bar stool.

  I shrugged and mumbled beer as I turned away and moving to the farthest table from her.

  As I sat down, the front door opened again and I saw him enter and stride directly to the bar. He was still wearing the same outfit he had been while checking me out earlier today. He clearly was not without funding as I could now see the designer labels on his jeans and in broad contrast to most of the men who lingered about Blake’s on a daily basis, he now stood out in clear beauty and overwhelming arrogance. I took a moment to truly admire his boyish charms and the way his jeans hung off of his masculine hips. He was tall and I could tell that if he were next to me he would seemingly tower over my frame by about six inches. His dark blond curls were darker in the dimly lit bar and had that freshly tousled look that most well to do men can pull off by running their fingers through after a shower. For a brief second I imagined myself doing just that and suddenly I felt a warmth creep up inside of me. My body reacted before my mind in a tight frustration before I shook myself out of it. I’d been in this position before. Guys like that were unattainable to girls like me. I was destined for gay best friends and pity fucks for the rest of my life due to my average looks and inability to function in social settings. Besides, I was partly in love with the man that visited my dreams, wasn’t I? Looking closely at the wood grain of the table I smiled to myself in the private joke I could never share.

  With the thoughts of my dark robed companion passing through my mind I felt a strong breeze roll in through the main door of the tavern announcing another peasant to grace the fiefdom that was Eric’s domain. I looked up only to see that it had not opened at all and undoubtedly it must have been my imagination. I glanced over and he was looking at the door as well with a curious tilt of the head. Suddenly he turned and looked directly at me, undoubtedly boring into my eyes again, but I couldn’t see through the dim reflection that his glasses cast back at me. His face and demeanor were without surprise this time. Although I could detect the look of his perfect lips tense up into the terse frown he gave me earlier. The familiar scowl made me smile to myself and an overwhelming urge to kiss them and rub my teeth across their moist folds reared up through my thoughts like a tidal wave. I continued our stare down. He did not look happy to see me here, although clearly had not been disappointed by it either. My mind impetuously raced off in a thousand different erotic directions and as the image of he and I covered in a sheen of sweat, kissing passionately before a fire bored down clearly into my mind I could see the corner of his lip turn slightly up as he bit down with a self satisfied smirk. Before my embarrassment could overtake me into an uncomfortable episode of disillusionment, I downed my beer, threw a $20 on the table and waved to Eric as I quickly stalked out to my rusted out, red Acura.