Shutes - an excerpt

She had come down from the heavens. A weeping, hysterical vision of hope that all man kind should have seen. She was proof of the unimaginable experiences no one dares dream of. Slowly, she fluttered down through the recesses of open sky directly into the middle of a plowed field. The field emitted this shade of pale yellow that seemed to be washed out by rain and an intense sunshine grilling down on us. The sunshine which came down on us was calmed by the consistent breeze blowing that day. The intense look of life on her face was a beacon of light for my own private experience. She provided for me at that very instance what I had needed so desperately - something to look forward to. Something other than what I had up until that point - a wasteful sense of time filled with a glide from one glutinous sinful obsession to the next. I had been
looking for a relief from this problematic outlook on life for sometime. It was only then that I realized just how sincerely I needed this. Confused speech patterns seemed to pile out of her mouth more like mumbo jumbo than any coherent sense of language. If she had told me this was heaven, I would have believed her. And for the most part, it could have been true.
Just after she had touched down, it occurred to me how unique a name such as Evangeline is. Most people would shorten it to Lilly, I asked about her last name. Evangeline informed me she didn’t care much for last names.

“All the great ancients are all known by a single name,” she said. “Socrates, Aristotle and Homer – all known by one name. Peopole would never look up to a great philosophical genius by the name of Aristotle Johnson.”

We both shared a chuckle at the absurdity. I began thinking of this moment as an honestly lucid event in the course of my life. The sunshine itself seemed to create a haze around the trees lingering on the edges of this field. With that, everything else in the vicinity was lined with this bright gleaming. Though I hadn’t smoked in almost five years, I could still remember what it was like to be high standing in a field in the middle of the afternoon. Unsure what has just occurred and curious about what will happen next. Evangeline seemed of a magical sort, she appeared to know things, know things about life and anything else relevant or not. And I knew nothing of the sort. I was a blank slate waiting to be filled with an ocean of knowledge I never could have known existed. Her presence was a gift to me from some unknown being dangling above me. I was grateful for every second we would share together.