Amygdala: Mother Night

"Heavenly shades of night are falling"...

Lyle Trenton drifted between the cab of the Old General and those sudden shadows that had collected within, and his body's need for sleep. He was not certain at which point that they had crossed over into time-warp radio, but he was not entirely put off by it so much as he'd taken on about as many changes as a man might comfortably be able to manage for one night.

... "It's twilight time"

He'd likely led and left two men to their grave back there, down the road. That pretty much only aided and abetted to the stress and road-wear. He had been sleepless and dreamless for way too damn long, and his mind began subconsciously veering off from the business at hand. A rig was much less forgiving for any lack of attention that you might misspend being human, and it took a lot more to get her righted back to the road. Any trooper that had come along would have put him off the road long ago, even with his somewhat creative logging of mileage in his books. Lyle had over-driven his daily due when he had pulled in to the parking lot at The Pit. The illegality of his run aside, there was only so much a body could take before it started taking its own time to get a little something of what it required.

"Out of the mist, your voice is calling"...

Before she had crawled back into his bunk, the little gal from the bad girls' club had told him that her name was Coriander. That struck him as a bit off for a stripper, though he had not really said much about it the time. She sure as hell wasn't in her work clothes, which might probably have been a blessing. Lyle was distracted enough, between a little manslaughter and an ever building need for sleep.

... "It's twilight time"

It was still troublesome, having a stranger in his truck. The fact that she was a tad more than fair to look at did some damage as well, kind of dark and petite. She was obviously a bit of firecracker, but the likely alternative to taking on those two big mother so-and-sos was probably bleaker than a few bruises and scratches. She didn't say much as to how all that ruckus had come about, save that they were "taking her back". And that was where she had left it, crawling back into his cab and stripping down to crawl up into his bunk.

"When purple colored curtains mark the end of day"...

Lyle had was just about going to suggest that she might know of a place where he could let her off, just before she had headed off into the back. Lyle hadn't let his eye tarry too long from the road, but sleep was not the only accommodation to his all-is-well fund that he had let slide a bit too long. Lyle had not really came from the sort of world that he was going allow him curiosity a bit of levity. The fear of being jacked, or in some another way treated unfairly would have likely put him off.

... "I hear you, my dear"....

There was always the urge to step it up, lay back in the dark and just let it take him down. The idea that this li'l gal might just as soon cut his damn throat, as to take on any of his own concerns surely was not helping his cause for sleep. Neither was the fact that she was just there, in the back of his truck, bare as the day that she was born. Lyle didn't particularly wear his jeans too tight, but they sure as hell felt as if they were giving him a lot less room where he needed it most. Just the smell of a woman sort of stoked his winsomeness. Problem was that trying to take the edge off would likely only make it worse.

It was really a bad idea for him to have stopped at all, let alone all of the trouble that came along afterward.

... "At twilight time"

There was something soothing, not near even enough of a lull to set his mind at ease as the old music drew him off, and away from these modern times into the last recall of listening to any sort of thing like this. Emily could have some queer tastes in music, but he doubted that she would have ever cared much for the fifties.

It was his Gram Wilson that had first taught him some about music. She didn't just like one thing about it. She'd listen to it all, and sort it away later if she was struck by it in some way. Gram Wilson could play a little bit on the piano, but she had come under the conviction from somewhere that she never really had much of a talent for it. From Hank Snow and Faron Young, Elvis and Buddy Holly, to Chopin and Benny Goodman. She only actually bought religious recordings, but she did always keep her radio in working order. George Beverly Shay and Tennessee Ernie Ford were most common in her meager collection, though it was not really what she would listen to in those closing hours of the day--when she could sit off to her own and just be by herself.

"Deepening shadows gather splendor"...

There was really only one person that Lyle had ever known that she would let invade that quiet, private little space that she had always kept for herself. She would just sit out in the side yard, with the window open and the radio playing, just whatever the local disk jockey too a mind to spinning back around again. Lyle could recall finding some shit on one of the A.M. stations that used to play some of the old serials-- like Flash Gordon, and Mystery Adventure Theater. This was well into the time of the television, which Gram Wilson kept one, but rarely let it play for long. Television sets were just starting to get around in her younger days, but her family never really found a need to own one. She always seemed a bit put off by that particular advancement, claiming that it was ruining folk's brains with idleness.

The radio afforded one just enough bait to cue up their own imaginations. You sure as hell were not told how to feel or what to think. It was almost mystical...

... "as day is done"

One of the first songs that Lyle had learned to play on the guitar was Just As I Am, on account that it was Gram Wilson's favorite song to hear. She'd always smile whenever she heard it played right.

"That was just beautiful Baby," she had told him, after he had thought he had learned it well enough to let her hear it for herself. Learning to play what his Grandma Wilson loved was where his fairly lackluster musical career had started. She was sort of like his first muse.

"Fingers of night will soon surrender"...

The front seat of the Old General had seemed pretty damn cozy enough for sleep, when he was trying to drive. Yet ever since he had taken the truck on down, deep into back-road country, before pulling off onto the side and shutting her down--his mind and body had refused to rest. His over-active imagination, once steered off into the somewhat saner territory of his old, childhood memories seemed to ease back some on the throttle of the loco choo-choo that had once been all rip-roaring to blast out of his shorts. The further, and farther, he kept his mind away from the nekkid woman in the back of his cab made the need to tarry off a bit into the wood-line far less pressing.

... "the setting sun"

It was not the first time that he had to wonder at himself. Of how he might suspect that most guys would do in this same situation, and the way that he just put down what he wanted into someone that he would more like to be. There were times where that was actually more irritating, than he would count it among his blessings. It wasn't as if he was a good man so much as he didn't take to wrong in any sort of natural way. His crush on booze had its own sort of dark mojo, as his conscience tended to let him be for a while. It let his mind and body do a bit of roaming, for which he might otherwise feel honor-bound to decline, and deny himself a bit of what he had been told what was really going on.

"I count the moments, Darling"

At some point along the way, he had lost contact with Jesus, which was one of the first gods that the majority of Americans would come to know. Thing was that, while he was fair certain that Jesus never changed, Lyle's views upon the subject of religion, right and wrong, and maybe some little ado about what Heaven might be like in the afterward seemed to rust up, and just get stuck, not long after Gram Wilson passed away. He could never recall doing much that he knew to be wrong while she was alive, and it almost seemed near to like that, for him, Heaven was in Grandma Wilson's smile. It made him feel good, right and clean; and made him want to just keep on chasing after it with any and everything that he ever might try to do.  

... "'Til you're here with me"

There was maybe a little something of that still left in him when he had first met Emily St. Clair. It wasn't the same really, as you kind of had to squint up tight to find even a vague resemblance to their characters. What was more was what he could see of himself in her, the place that she wanted to believe in and that one seemed more normal and usual. She maybe-might've thought that Lyle could do something about that, in those early days. There was a time when every new thing that he wrote and played had at least something to do about her. When, about the time that he thought he might have done something right, he would play it for her... and sometimes, she would smile.

"Together, at last"...

Lyle was not sure what died first, his love for music or her smiles. They had come to some indistinct and unforeseen crossroad, which Lyle had not even really noticed until they seemed long past it...

... "at twilight time"

Lyle opened his eyes and nearly screamed, until his voice hitched up in his throat and those glowering orbs that he seen in the back of his truck slowly became set into her face, as she emerged from behind the curtain.

"Deep in the dark, your kiss will thrill me"...

"I won't hurt you Lyle. I promise," she said as she laid her cheek against his knee, and began to caress his leg.

"Is that...uh, some kind of birth defect?" He asked, unable to suppress the willies that kept crawling on up his spine like a spidery train, or the coarse scales of a serpent.

... "like days of old"

"It means something," she answered, after a pause to likely deliberate her words.

"Something like?" He asked after she had left a shrug in place, as if it had all been explained as far as she knew anything much about it.

"Lighting the spark of love, that fills me"...

"Something good, possibly." She said, and then crawled fully out of the back of the truck, and up into his lap--drawing up upon him, something much like a cobra would, as her hand caressed at his face and hair.

"Well, you definitely have my attention," Lyle chuckled nervously.

... "with dreams untold"

Coriander grabbed his hair and kissed him viciously, her body pressed deeply against him as her hips begin to find their most natural rhythm, burrowing down into his lap.

"Each day I pray for evening"...

Lyle closed his eyes groaned helplessly as her kiss fell away from his face, and down to his neck, nibbling and suckling as the sense of urgency began to build, and passing from her to him and back in an unspoken communication.

... "just to be with you"

Lyle opened his eyes again as Coriander moved away from him to unbuckle his belt. There was a moment of clarity, as she undid the fastenings of his jeans to wonder at what she was truly after. It was pause that did not endure long, as he lifted his hips and felt his pants jerked, and were pulled away from his hips. She kissed him, through the thin cloth of his briefs as he could feel his own damn heart beat, and the throbbing became almost painful, as if it intended to blow him up... not with semen, but by the powerful surge of blood...

"Together, at last"...

Coriander lowered herself down slowly upon him, as Lyle watched on through dulled eyes and seen the shadows begin to play against her body, as she leaned back away from him and allowed him to see that those shadows were inside of her-- spreading in dark rivers across her flesh, waxing and waning lines that assumed no perfect shape, other than they were like vines that grew and swayed within her. Coriander's smile was not to calm, but more of a mounting hunger that was waiting to be fed as she grabbed his hands and lulled back while laying them against her small breasts, which ached as he dug his fingers deeply into her chest.

... "at Twilight time"

Lyle jumped as Coriander snapped up violently, seizing his hair and sinking her teeth into the soft flesh of his neck. Lyle had made a vague attempt to pull away, but could not find any release from the those invisible coils that held him fast into this maniacal dance, and he quickly succumb to the frenzy of disbelief.