The limbo between life and death is not something easily described.  I would explain it as a living state, but that is only because I assume those who read this are alive.  My senses blurred into one another; the world a constant stream of haze.  Inside my mind, I find no real thought process.  All the words have started to jumble and I can’t imagine putting them into any type of phrase that would be intelligent.  I just know I’m still freezing cold.  I might as well have been dead.

            The inside of the vehicle was much warmer then my own body.  I don’t know how I got there.  The roar of the engine told me we were in some kind of truck and we were flying fast down whatever road we were now on.  Guess the Grim Reaper drives a diesel. 

            Head in the lap of some person, I listened to the low mumbles from the front and back seat.  They were angry and relentless, especially that of the one in the front.  My body shuddered and the noise from above me was horrifying, but so protective.  Some kind of yell or growl that pleaded for time.

            My sense of sound was the first to come into check.

            “You should have just left her there.”

            “Leave her to die?”

            “Why not?  It’s her fault.”

            “She doesn’t die.  Not tonight.”

            The protection that seeped from each word of the male above me was a security blanket I tied around myself.  A heavy groan escaped me; the pain that started to erupt from my body was becoming more and more aware.  I wanted that voice to help.  I wanted it to stop the anguish that was ripping me apart inside.  A large hand rubbed against my back trying to create friction.  There was no use.  I was so cold that it hurt more then it helped.

            “Are we there yet?”

            “Almost.  Hold your damn horses.  Two more miles and we’re there.”

            “Marek, you must run a warm bath when we get to the house.  Not hot, just warm.  It will destroy her skin.”

            “Ya, ya.  Just as long as she doesn’t puke or bleed or anything in this damn Dodge.  This truck costs more then her life.”

            “Not funny.”

            “Oh, I thought it was,” chided the female voice.  I let another painful noise ripple up my throat.

---

            There was no time wasted in the rescue effort.  It was more then I deserved from the strangers who had taken me in.  My voice returned once my deathly cold skin submerged into the water; I screamed with pain I never knew existed.  The heat against my skin was unbearable.  My fingers gnarled into my hands and my toes curled against it.  There were two sets of hands that took to straightening me out in the water.

            “Please, just do this.  You’ll be better in a little bit.”

            “No loss of feeling, obviously.”

            “Please my girl, just listen to my voice.  If you want to keep all your appendages, you must listen.  Scream all you want, but please spread out your fingers and toes.  Let them warm,” the voice of the protector tried to calm me.  I cried out, my face moving against the side of the tub.

            “No blackness and no visible tissue damage.  She must have only been in there for no more then ten minutes.  Other then that, she would have been a meat popsicle.”

            “Thanks Marek.  That’s just a wonderful image.”

            “No problem.  She should be okay, once she stops screaming.  Look at that gash on her head.  Yes…”

            “You can leave now, Marek.”

            “Just when I figure this could be a lot more fun.”

            A door closes and I whimper in the tub.  I have not opened my eyes yet.  I can’t.  I do not want to know where I am, I do not want to know what’s wrong.  I don’t want to see my skin, white with the ice that has crystallized in my skin.  I don’t want to see the hands on my body that are trying to check my fingers for any idea of loss.  Do I even open my eyes to see who saved me?  Do I want to know or do I want this to all be a dream?

Upon a midnight dreary, a man saunters through a dark and wear graveyard.  Within his hands, three lush red roses and a bottle of congac.  The man, who is dressed in black and has no real identity in this Baltimore cemetery, makes his way to the stone of writer and poet.  The three beautiful roses are placed down on the tombstone, with the sixty or more people that watch this man assuming they are for the poet, his wife, and the poet's mother-in-law.  The toast is silent swallow from the bottle before the man in black places it down on the stone.  The birthday gift to the dead writer is fulfilled and the man disappears into the night, like he has ever January 19th for the past sixty years.  No one has ever seen the man who toasts to Edgar Allan Poe on the writer's birthday.






Nothing like a mystery to celebrate an author who had a life so wrapped in enigmas.
I raise my glass to the Poe Toaster.  May the tradition continue.

I have stuffed myself full of borscht, cabbage rolls, pergoies, pollock, wheat and Christmas goodies.
LOVE IT!


...I will tak some pictures once I get back to Saskatoon so you guys can see what I got... (which includes a STELLAR Vestal watch (the model is "Seville", if you really wish to find it yourselves).

I made a fanmix for one of the couples in The Host.  Ya...I'm a nerdlinger.
Deal.


It's called "Good."
...go under the cut for more about it...and for just the cover art (cause I am too lazy to get everything up).