The Souls of Beautiful Monsters - Lucy

“Turquoise? I can't even say the word without falling down. You want me to spell it?”

“No, no. Just describe it.”

“Describe turquoise? The color or the stone?”

Lucy laughs and scratches her head. “Hmmm… I suppose it doesn't matter,” she says.

Stephen twirls a finger around Lucy's bare foot then traces her toes gently before glancing up.

“Hang on,“ he says, “it’s the same problem!”

Stephen was fascinated by Lucy's ability to confound the simplest notions with an ease that surpassed the remarkable agility of her practical mind. It was what first sent shivers up his spine that first week in thesis for biomedical engineering.

 Dr. Shirkfield, the startling young star professor, had asked for the students to share their topic concepts for the attendant research course. When no one took the bait, and an uncomfortable silence grew in the room, the young woman in the front of the class raised her hand and flopped it about.

“Ah! One fearless target… I mean, student!” The class giggled.

“What is your name and what have you been thinking about for thesis?”

“My name is Lucy, and I have been thinking about how to properly glue a dog to a man in such a manner so that both dog and man might still remain best of friends.”

The silence that followed was stunning.

 Shirkfield folded his arms and leaned further back against the desk, which seemed way too small at the head of the auditorium-sized classroom. He chewed his lip.

“The fur, it seems – the fur would be a primary factor,” he said sincerely.

“The breath,” replied Lucy, “More primary.”

Silence still prevailed. Stephen raised his hand. Shirkfield nodded.

“I think the morning walk might be at the top of that list.”

Lucy turned to see who had said it. Stephen waited for her gaze to pass in his direction, and when it did, he was so surprised by the quizzical intensity of her gaze that he fumbled for words he thought were there, shrugged the attempt and simply smiled instead.

“She has wings,” said her fourth grade teacher, Mr. Saldow.

“What wings? Where?” said Grace, looking around the small classroom.

Gary smiled at his wife across the long, low table. He fingered the name tag with his daughter’s name printed neatly in black crayon and smiled again as he noticed the colorful scrawl of the other children's name tags. “He means…” Gary began.

“She's smart,” interrupted Mr. Saldow. “Very smart. And she uses it. She has the tools to fly. She does her work with ease, is interested and engaged, excels…”

“I hear a ‘but’ on its way,” interrupted Gary.

“She will be challenging, and she will be challenged as well.” Saldow had spoken the truth.

The double halo of frills, pale pink, butter-hued edge against a mica-black glow; luminous, so clear, sometimes shimmering crimson behind the darkness – there is a sense of grace and ease that accompanies this memory. There are words, there were words, but they had dissolved into a vision that was at once a universe of emptiness and fullness.

“I had a dream of a string that traced up into the sky and went on and on and it was the narrowest of threads, microns around, less… and somehow at the same time it was as immense as the face of the earth. This thread transcended scale. But the thing is, I had transcended with it, otherwise it would have been impossible to comprehend! Do you see what I’m saying?”

“I do,” says Stephen.

“So your on board?” Lucy smiles widely, her small ears push up and back.

“Always,” Stephen says, watching her ears.

“What will we name her?”

Stephen casually raises one eyebrow and ticks off three seconds against Lucy’s toe with his index finger.

“Her?” He asks.

“Her, him, it…”

“It?”

“The baby. What will we name the baby? Where are you, on board or overboard?”

Stephen searched for the same words he always searched for before surrendering. He smiles, “Transcendence equals…”

“Stephen, stop teasing – transcendence transcends equations. I think Nancy is a nice name.”

Stephen gazes into Lucy’s eyes and finds them aflame with a pale shadow of buttery hue glowing inside a mica-black clarity behind which could have been a deep crimson eternity. It is the same intensity he had seen in her eyes that day in thesis class. It is everything in the universe and it is silent and calm. It touches his soul and reveals the perfect quiet behind the noise he allowed in his own cluttered mind.

“Nancy,” Stephen says, “or Bob.”

Lucy laughs and Stephen thinks about how that quiet goes out and out forever in every direction and it is terrifying: steel grey planes of endlessness radiating out from… from what? From nothing - but a nothing he knows, had known - a memory of a memory – maybe a dream or maybe a stillness that touched something that came before, before nothing…

“What is it? What are you looking at?” asks Lucy.

“Monster,” whispers Stephen.

“What?” Lucy’s eyes well up with excitement, “Me, a monster?”

“ A beautiful monster,” smiles Stephen.

“Still,” says Lucy grinning, “A monster?”

Stephen thinks for a moment and struggles to get out the words.

“Mmm… Not necessarily You-you; maybe just the soul of you; that is the soul of a beautiful monster – not necessarily you.” He tries to subdue the struggle and gestures at the Lucy’s body. “Not you and certainly not another – something, words - The words don’t add up.”

Lucy laughs. “So, you saw it! Well then!” Lucy pokes Stephen with her toe and tickles his chin. “How does that feel?”

“Feels just like everything else feels when we are together,” he says. “Confounding and comfortable. Frightening and absolutely breathtaking.”

“So, you? Do you remember?” Asks Lucy, biting her lower lip.

Stephen leans forward, traces his finger up Lucy’s bare leg, circles her knee, and stops.

“That’s it, right there,” he says. “That monster - trying to draw me in and have me confirm with words something that I don’t understand and can’t even remember.”

“But,” says Lucy, now without a smile, “you do remember, Stephen. You do.”