I was invited (well, not personally, but still…) to join the Fandango’s Friday Flashback!

Fandango scrolls back, every Friday, and gives a second chance to a post he had published on the same date, years before. I thought it was a great way to remember some of the stuff I did a while back, and I decided to participate…

So here it is!

Written on July 15th of 2016, here’s a psychedelic piece of fiction. It was (if my memory’s good) my first writing collaboration with another blogger. I’d give proper credit to the other writer, but their blog doesn’t exist anymore. So just remember that only half of this crazy summer story is mine, the other half being the work of someone I consider to be a master storyteller.

I hope you’ll enjoy it (again), and I wish you’re safe and well, wherever you are…

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I felt it to be quite relaxing, enjoying someone elses dream for a while. I didn’t need to apologize for my Stormy thoughts, nor my unsettled disposition.

She was doing the driving, and all I had to do was enjoy the ride, if I could that is. I felt myself to be a bit restless, being the passenger and all, but those ideas just needed to be adjusted to someone elses thoughts.

She didn’t seem to understand my distress. Why can’t you just let your imagination go, and let another unreality mold your Summer Daze?

Yes. Why not I asked myself?

Your problem, she said turning the car down a steep embankment, and removing her feet from the brake pedal, is not being able to let yourself go, am I correct?

…..I wish, I hadn’t let her drive. That was neither the first, nor the last time, I wished that. I was more in control, when I thought about driving, wrenching the wheel away from her, regaining control of my life again, but is that what I really wanted?……

Yes, I yelled as the car raced towards our doom. I like to be in control. It must be one of my failings, which I screamed at her, thinking that the end of my nightmare was close, and getting closer all the time!

She must have caught the glimpse of terror in my eyes, as she stepped on the gas pedal making the engine roar like the lions I had left behind, embarking with her instead…

“Any regrets yet?” she yelled in the wind, driving madly down the slope. I shook my head, fearing that any backing up would make her crazier, but my toes were eagerly twisting and curling, rubbing against the rug looking for calm beachy sand to hide in…

Her gaze left what should have been the road to our common dreams of a now apparently deadly summer, to put on a song, and stare at me smiling. “Hello, you fool…” she started singing at the top of her lungs, her eyes not leaving mine, and the car still bumping and racing downhill, pretty much as it felt it.

“I was thinking more Loving Spoonful, you see?” I managed to tell her, just before she turned her attention back to her driving.

“See? You’re doing it again! I am giving you a blank check to my dream account, and yet, you turn around and try to take control of everything! My car, my road, my song! C’mon join the joyride…”

……I felt like my Summer had taken a turn for the worse. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it seemed like, I wasn’t in control anymore……

Couldn’t get clearer…  Clear as the huge Sequoia trees that were forcing her to zigzag frantically, postponing our death each time we…  each time she dodged one.

“Saved you once more!” She said, not seeming the least concerned about our still increasing speed.  “Don’t you feel alive?” she asked, and then whistled along with the radio…

I closed my eyes, starting to think that she didn’t know anything about summer after all… That letting go was too big of a chance to take, and that I might as well take back my own dreams under my arm, and slip away to the beach to hope for another chance companion to spend what little of summer was left.

Just as I was about to wipe this crazy road trip from my mind, a warm feeling enveloped me, like a blanket. Flowers started blooming everywhere, from the ceiling down, covering the walls, and hiding the door I wanted to let myself out of a moment before…

“Do you trust me?” Her eerie voice surprised me, concentrated as I was, getting used to the new vegetation. It felt as if she was just next to my ear, feeling her voice more than I could hear it.

“Do you?”

“You’re not even really here…” I said, convinced she had stayed in the car, having the time of her life.

Without warning, I suddenly got the burning feeling of her lips on my neck, searing my skin, as if she wanted to brand me.  “I think we should be summer lovers, you and me, you know?” she whispered, as I considered the burn on my neck. “Just like phone sex… Just without the phone! I am not too much into technology, not during summer…”

She burst into laughter, burst into a hundred butterflies, and flew away from me, leaving me wondering what had just happened. When she appeared again, coming out of the bushes, she was covered with Clematis Cloudburst, from head to toe. The delicate flowers didn’t let a clear view of her silhouette, but allowed me just enough to imagine every curve of her hiding behind the petals…

“One of them is inked into my skin… Want to come and look for it?”

……If I said yes, at this juncture, would I survive this journey? Would I just fade away like some Summer Memory, that someone lost on their Summer Holiday. “Did you find it, or is it gone for good?” It was never there, I’m afraid……

I did, even if I feared a trap, not wanting her to break into butterflies again if I brushed my fingers lightly on her hip.

“Do you believe in my summer dreams now?” She asked. “Are you ready to let go?”

I just kept staring at her for a moment, trying my best to focus on the violet blossoms and not the pieces of pale milky skin in between. She walked to me, reaching up a hand, running her fingers on the burn on my neck, with a content look in her Manga eyes.

“Are you ready?” I nodded, impatient to go flower picking…

“Then there is something we have to get over with first!!”

I opened my eyes, as we were jumping the cliff, Thelma-&-Louise like. My heart skipped a beat and I felt a freezing chill down my spine. The air was so cold in the car, suddenly, that I swear I saw the edges of the windshield icing up… With icy little flower patterns,  slowly decorating the glass, framing the view of our imminent death!

That’s when I saw it…  Huge, more than huge, giant. We were flying straight into oblivion.

“My love, meet General Sherman, General, meet my new summer love!”

Flying straight into the biggest tree I could have imagined… even in my wildest dreams… And there was nothing more to do… The windshield was completely covered with ice now, and there was really nothing left to do…

But let my summer fall straight into winter!

…….I fell back onto the front seat, as if nothing had happened. Everything looked the same, but I felt differently. She had been driving, no doubt about it. She had left an impression on me, similar to the impression of melting ice crystals on the windshield in the noonday sun. I shook my head a few times, trying to force oxygen back to my brain, lest I fainted from sheer lack of sanity!

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