Sophie soaks.

The black hole left by Sophia’s meteoric ‘drop of doom’, while regarded as an annoying pothole by the average tourist, became a Mecca for blonde schoolgirls and astrophysicists alike. However, dear readers, that is another story.




Meanwhile, Betsy torques along secondary highway number 37, a confident Harry at the wheel, a soapy Sophie sudsing in the Jacuzzi and the lively chorus of Jingle Bells reverberating throughout the cab. Harry’s voice - a likely candidate for a fourth tenor - mingles gaily with Betsy’s percussive pounding of the powdery pavement.


Sophia languishes, doing her face, applying Road Rash Repair, by Mary Kay - on special at $2.99 for the holiday gift-giving season.




She eyeballs Harry over the edge of the tub and sinks back. His powerful hairy toes turn her crank. In a flash, she sees Dr. Midas Maybe for what he is…an evil pencil-necked geek with a recently acquired auditory problem and propensity for rather dangerous wilderness games. Not that this was entirely new news to her. She had survived many other meetings with the master of masquerade. She rubbed the small scar on her forehead, drifted back in time, back into the frothy warm tub, and closed her eyes.



Images of a heavy oak door invaded her. Adorned with a brass plaque and proudly embossed with the psychiatrist’s name; it was swinging open under the renewed strength of someone’s –no- his -resolve. An image of the first ray of sun striking his face as he emerged from the shadows enveloped her. She remembered the moment when she recognized him; her hollow gasp muted by the splat of a passing gull. All of this and more swamped her memories, as the tub similarly swamped the floor. Then, memories blurred into a painful torrent of fists and feathers. What had happened? He had dodged and ducked behind the door, swiftly examined the gull, then flung it with an odd precision in her direction. She felt it; again, pierce her forehead at full force. Sophia plunged her head under the churning water, and rubbed her burning scar. Emerging, she popped opened her bottle green eyes allowing the single tear to trickle into the bubbles below. Had he knelt beside her limp body and vowed to right his wrongs or had her near death delirium deluded her? Dare she ask him? Does it matter? Wouldn’t it all stop if he ceased to be? Would she then be free?



She sneaks another peak at Harry and sloshes water over the edge of the tub. This hero dude, she ponders, ignoring the water as it trickles along the teak floor, has a thing or two to learn about a woman. Slowly she rises like Venus from the water, her green eyes glinting, the road rash freshly exposed by her recent plunge beneath the bubbles. Stealthily she reaches for Harry’s straight razor, and then, OH NO,…



To be continued…