Value Received

You don’t believe in ghosts and other imaginary creatures? You would if you had sex with one, I bet. Anyway that is what happened to me. After I had my wild adventure I have thought long and hard about finding a way to join my beautiful little supernatural seductress. I miss her…

The last place in the world I would choose to work would be in a cemetery. However it was the only job and I was almost out of money so I took the only work I could find. No way would I choose to work among grieving relatives and freshly buried stiffs. Don’t get me wrong, I am as sensitive as most people about death and dying. If it is up close and personal it is horrible. On the other hand, if it ias someone else involved then it’s sort of, gee, too bad and pass the sugar please.

But I sure as hell did not care to make a living by working around the dead. I’d rather be a hamburger flipper for Big Mack or something. But “landscape technician” was the only job available and I needed to work to eat.

When Big Solar Electronic Industries decided to “relocate” to India that meant two hundred and fifty of us all got the axe at the same time. I lost my car after I missed one payment. This meant I could not even move to another city where I might be able to obtain employment.

The good looking young women, and some of the not so good looking got all the fast food jobs around and us guys got what was left which were slim pickings, indeed. I put in applications and handed out resumes like they were welfare checks in California.

Unemployment doesn’t really pay enough to live on, so when I found out about a job as a landscape technician at the cemetery, I became one. I wore Frisco Jeans and an Izod polo shirt to work in, the most plain costume in my wardrobe. I rode a big mowing machine all over the beautiful green vistas that the permanent residents weren’t able to appreciate and trimmed the edges of the walkways with a power edger. I picked up loose paper and made certain that there were no unsightly wilted flowers on the graves or loose candy wrappers blowing in the breeze. That was how I met her.

The job was an undemanding one intellectually. I mean, just how much thought do you have to put in to pick up the trash left behind by the grief stricken friends and relatives of the deceased? The dead certainly didn’t cause any problems. Or that was my impression before I met her.

I had bent over to remove the week old flowers from a holder. They were withered and as dead as all the permanent residents there. Just as I started to stand straight I heard a soft, melodic woman’s voice say, “How sad, the dead flowers are removed from the homes of the dead they were placed to honor. How very sad. The poor flowers.”

I quickly stood and turned around to see who was talking to me. I looked down at a tiny woman who appeared in her early twenties, or perhaps even in her late teens. She had those perfect features poets describe as “ageless” and normal males call wonderful. She wore no makeup whatsoever and hadn’t even a ribbon in her flowing in waves, raven black hair that hung way down past her waist. Oh, My God, what a tiny waist she had. I mean, Barbie, eat your heart out.

Her very fine chiseled upper class English features were so striking that even lipstick would have been too much. Her glowing porcelain alabaster skin was pale. It looked as if the sun had never touched it. As if reading my mind, she said, “I so seldom seem to be out during the day, you know.” Then she looked at me and smiled and said, “But no, how could you know?” Wanton angel was the description my feverish mind conjured up.

All I was capable of was to stand there benumbed and stare at her perfect, beautiful, almost flawless features. Her dark as midnight hair blew in gentle in the breeze, tag ends lifting and waving, to come to a rest as the gentle winds blew for a moment and stopped, only to blow another gentle breath once more.

The simple nearly transparent shift she wore was loose fitting and hung on her in soft folds that left little to the imagination.