Jenny_Mysterious-RainRide

Jenny Songwhit.

Exploring her old tape collection was always a funny thing.

After another eon, there it was again, fresh and new. --Recorded songs captured with her thin finger presses and chewed finger nails a million years ago, including pops and clicks from the big mechanical "Record" key, the fade out of the last song and the intake of breath before the D.J.'s voice rumbled brass and cheek. Each recording original and unique, never before, never again. --Buying an official, clear copy from the record store was cold by comparison. After she had listened through countless repetitions to the same beloved tracks sampled from her bedroom FM radio, a song was not True without the errors captured via tape cassette. Shiny, futuristic in the 80's.

She picked one of those tape cassettes up from the carpet, where it had lain waiting for nearly three decades, where she had thrown it thoughtlessly only yesterday perhaps. --From before she knew who she would become; a time traveling warrior bearing the weight of too much knowledge. . . She held the cassette, its clear plastic catching the muted rain light pattering against her bedroom window. A hesitation before clattering it home into the tape deck and pressing shut the little door. And opening the door in her mind, Memory Lane stretching before her, a terrible, beautiful thing now; the feelings always struck hard, --had the first four times. Would surely again today. . .

Pop, click. . , clack.

Speakers hissed and music leaped through the still air of 1985, playing loud and fresh, recklessly thrumming the chords of her soul. Falling back upon the rumple of quilt and pillow, the tears began at once.

Faces and memories, all hopelessly confused through too many pillars of time, traveled too often, all of it hammered her little heart. The world burned in the future. In the now. And nobody knew. Monsters trailed through the history of human kind, their red eyes leering. And nobody knew. Girls and boys crushed by loneliness and cruelty at schools from one end of the world to the other. People born with hope and love, taught all the wrong things, fed on ignorance winding through lives of strict control into adulthood, to hope for. . , what?

But all so beautiful! All so innocent.

Yes, the world was beautiful. Beautiful! It held such potential even through the battle against such fires of despair. Such invisible, all-powerful cruelty. . . What good was knowing when she was alone, screaming, hollering against prison walls she could not touch, could barely understand?

How did Ashelle do it? How did she live with such joy in the midst of this? Ashelle, who without effort spun misery and fear into love and other sparkling materials, lifting high the souls in her wake. But Jenny Songwhit was not a Princess Ashelle from far away. Not with such a weight of hurt and love as this pressing upon her chest. No. She was something else. . .

The room, soaring with music became too small in that moment. Jenny leaped from the bed covers and crossed the room in a single stride to throw open the window. It was every window she had ever thrown open, seeking air, escape. The wind swept in, speckled cold against her cheeks, wetted her hair. The red and black of the bricks across the alley pressed, oppressed, alley walls keeping the sky away. The world was too small to contain. . .

She let out a strangled roar and in a tumble of keys and shoes fled down the stairs, past her mother and outdoors, bicycle from its alcove and. . . Away!

The young muscles of her new body burned, hormones driving her mad, tears and rain running together as she raced through the city streets. Reckless, but for peerless skills, she threw herself, pressed the delicate, rattling machine of her bicycle through maneuvers which threatened to shake it apart, over curbs, down concrete steps, sending up bright sheets from puddles. She flew, seeking high ground, tearing up hill after hill, tires sliding and skidding, daring tragedy until. . .

Alone again. Always alone. . .

Three significant loves over her many, twisted years. Faces, each warm, each powerfully different, each holding her magnificence in those darkest moments where even Jenny Songwhit was not enough. Pushing the strands of her hair away, over hear ear, tilting up her chin to look deeply into her face, concerned, loving. All of them gone now, lost in the swirls of time.

The city streets began to shine and steam as the sun reclaimed the sky. Jenny, finally her wind gasped away at the top of the highest hill, looked over the city. Her city. It was under her charge. The monsters, if they would feed here, would face her first. She shook at the thought. She was a heroine, and she knew it.

"I will HUNT you!" she said clear, ringing the sky with her voice, not caring who heard. Wanting to be heard "I am the protector here! I will not allow you to feed on my people!"

The city sparkled in fresh light beneath her. Jenny Songwhit stood poised, quivering upon the hill as she dared the world, stood until the feeling subsided at last. She settled upon the seat of her bicycle and raised one hand to her cheek, pushed her own hair from her own face, over her own ear, and she gazed upon her city, concerned, loving.

The ache in her heart did not withdraw, but it changed. Settled also into its proper place.

"I am the protector here. And I will hold you dear," she breathed.

With that, she lifted foot to peddle and returned to the road, rolling smoothly now, returning down the hill. The rising mists flowing around her, silken, welcoming her return.

Again.

~

Jenny Mysterious is a web comic. Check it out at www.iboxpublishing.com