poemtry and prose

Lexi stretched. "Well, that was a bit anti-climatic," she said scratching her head. "I have done another reading. And it did not last as long as I was hoping it to. So yeah, it is now eight o'clock and I could either go back to sleepy now or do something a bit more productive with the time I have. I would much rather stay up a bit more."

Again, she looked around her room in the hopes that inspiration hit. She realized that she did this a lot but it was her mind's way of trying to parse the information that she had inside her head. She looked down at her gray and black sling back backpack. "Hmm, I really do not feel like studying any more tonight. I think I have been studying all day and therefore deserve a small reward. So nothing in there I want to play with."

Her eyes darted over the book case to where her iPod sat in its cradle being charged it the small boom-box that she bought for herself over the summer break. "Hey," she said, snapping her fingers. "There we go. I could go work out at the gym. After all, the school gives all of us graduates a free account and I have yet to really use mine." She pinched herself and poked at her stomach. A small but growing belly was exposing itself due to her age and minimal activity level.

"I refuse to ignore myself and let my body get all bent out of shape," she said heading into her closet to grab a pair of sweat pants, a t-shirt and a sweater. "Now, where did I place my sneakers and the work out clip for the iPod?" Lexi began to dig around inside her closet for the missing sneakers and band. It had been awhile since she actually did any sort of organized exercising away from the daily hike to and from the campus. Normally she would just wear her black, ten holed doc martens to school but she knew that with their age and how they hurt her feet after being in them for a few hours, there was no way she would wear them for working out at the gym. Besides, she was a bit more classier than that and actually wanted to not only look very sporty but cute as well.

"There is no harm in trying to pick someone up at the gym, is there?" she said to her shoes as she knotted and double knotted them, hoping that they would not fall apart and come undone. She gave herself a small smile and a tiny giggle burst from her lips. "Hmm, I guess I AM feeling a bit mischievous tonight."

She grabbed her small gym duffel from its location stuffed in the far recesses of her closet and opened it. "Let us see here, I will need a towel, my keys, my school student identification card and finally, my water bottle, filled with fresh, cold, and non-purified tap water. Blech, maybe I should fill this puppy up when I get to the gym," she thought as she collected the necessary items and tossed them into her bag. "Oh yeah, and I know I will need my iPod and the headphones. DOY! Cannot forget those. Exercising to nothing but the noise they have in the gym and that lame ass gym techno would make me stir crazy. And that is not what I would like to do today. No way siree."

Lexi paused after closing the bag's zipper up with an audible ZZIIIIIPPPP sound. Her eyes darted around the room as she created and went through a small mental check list of all the things that she thought she had on her and needed. "Got everything," she said as she mentally checked off the last item in her list and knew it was in her bag. "Okay, I am ready to go."

With that, she walked out of her apartment, shut the door behind her and slipped the key in the lock and gave a sharp twist. She was hyper and almost bounded down the stairs as she quickly moved to her car. Had it been a bit warmer out that night Lexi would have considered the idea of walking to the gym. While it was located on campus not too far from her apartment complex, it was still far enough that she did not want to spent the fifteen minutes walking over and getting a head cold and chill in the process. She also did not grab her jacket, even with the sweater on, it was cold and she was starting to feel the chill through the cotton.

Her car started up and the heater turned up to full blast. Lexi looked behind her as she swiftly pulled out from the parking lot and made her way towards the school's gym. Located in Bauer Hall, the semi-large, red brick building had got its name from one of the University's most celebrated marathon runners who attended the school for a few years. A bronze statue was erected out in front of the runner as he stretched out the right calf leg muscle. A faded and yellowish light had been trained on him to light his face and the path of others. Ivy grew in the large circular pot, complete with benches, that surrounded the runner's statue.

Since it was dark and night out, Lexi lucked out and got a parking spot that was close to the entrance of the gym. A few people, mostly undergraduates Lexi suspected, stood around outside gabbing as they either finished up their physical education credit requirement or their group class workout. A few non-exercising boys stood around the combination trash can and smoking can, ogling and catcalling to some of the girls that were just now wandering out of the building.

Lexi shook her head and put on her best "do not fuck with me" look and attitude. While she did not mind the occasional cat call from a guy she never knew, she was on a mission tonight and really did not want these boys giving her grief for entering the school's gym and messing up her game plan. She grabbed her bag from the car and swooped out of the driver's spot. Once her door was shut, she pushed the trigger for her car alarm without even looking back. Her car beeped twice to let her know that it was now secure and Lexi made her way past the ogling young boys and pushed open the heavy metal and glass doors that lead into the gym.

The moment Lexi wandered in through the doors of the gym her ears and brain were assaulted with the overly strong and perky sounds of random techno songs blaring through the state of the art sound system Fieldsmith University paid to put in the gym. "Ugh," she thought, "I have no idea why kids are actually doing drugs to this stuff already. The tempo alone is enough to make me hyped up insanely."

She dug through her bag as she stepped up to the check-in desk. "Can I see your student ID," the perky, young, blonde, undergraduate said while snapping her chewing gum. The young girl leaned over the desk and stuck out her hand impatiently, waiting for Lexi to drag her wallet from the bag. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Lexi finally found her wallet tucked all the way in the bottom of the bag, beneath her black work out towel.

"Here you go," she said trying not to look as frustrated as she felt, "sorry it took me a few minutes to dig it out."

The card reader beeped once as the gym assistant swiped her card under the red laser beam reader. Slowly, the girl's eyes scanned the reader to validate that her card and her scholarship proved valid enough to let Lexi proceed further into the gym. "That is okay, this thing," she said pointing to the antiquated system, "has been running slow tonight. You would think we have had a lot of people coming in and swiping their cards under here the way things seem to be going. I hope it gets cleared up soon."

Lexi grabbed her card back and gave the girl a few nods. "Yeah, the library also does that occasionally. Now that is a pain."

The girl blinked at her and moved her eyes back down to the issue of Hollywood Today that she was reading, "Be careful and have a good work out," she absently called out as Lexi moved beyond the gate and into the overly lit workout room.

The gym had two rooms to it. The first, was the room she was currently standing in. Large gym machines and racks of free weights and dumbbells occupied the majority of this space. It felt cramped to Lexi but there were hardly any people using the machines when she went in to work out. To the left of this room there were two doors. One marked with a stylized man, denoted where the men's locker room was. The other stylized icon of a woman, led Lexi back into their own locker room. Off to Lexi's right was another door that opened into a long hallway. Two racquet ball courts appeared on either side of the hallway. Sounds of bouncing balls came from the space just beyond the end of the hallway. Two groups of boys running up and down the basketball court could be seen as each side attempted to steal the ball away from their opponent.

The strong burning smell of bleach and ammonia filled her nose when she pushed open the door to the woman's locker room. Lexi sneezed.

"Ugh, I guess someone decided to use the hot tub again," she said as she pushed her way against the stench to a bench and locker. She found one that was free and after having removed her iPod, the headphones, towel and water bottle, she pushed the gym bag into the space. It fit almost perfectly. Lexi closed the locker and inserted a quarter into the key slot and twisted the key free. She then pinned the key onto her pants on the inside and used the space on the bench to stretch out a bit. Her calves were sore but it took her body to go down almost the entire length of the bench to feel any sort of stretch. Lexi smiled and felt proud that all the walking she did to the campus and back to her apartment actually was keeping her body a bit more in shape. Five minutes later, she had completely stretched out her entire body and felt ready to start giving her body a bit more of a burn.

She filled up her water bottle on the way out of the locker room with fresh and cold purified water and placed her towel around the back of her neck. Her eyes took a minute to adjust to the bright fluorescent lights bleeding into the white walled room. Most of the work out machines in here were also white with small black and grey metal hooks and bars and weights coming out from them at weird and varius angles. Lexi quickly pushed her iPod's ear buds into her ears and sighed at the almost now silence. Even with the iPod off, she felt better than having been blasted with the strange and crappy tunes that were being pumped out of the gym's speakers.

She made her way over to the bench pressing machine. Lexi sat her water bottle and the towel down besides her on the floor and adjusted the machines to her settings. She pulled the tiny iPod from her pocket and pressed the play button before slipping it back into her pocket. She bent up to reach the bars and then... paused.

The sound coming from her iPod was a song that was strange and unfamiliar to her. She did not recall ever having the song on her pod and sat in utter disbelief as she heard it. After thirty seconds more of listening to the strange song, she removed the iPod from her pocket and stared at the screen. The tiny LCD display read: "Moon River" by Henri Mancini.

"What the hell. Who the hell? I do not recall having put this on my pod," she said. Lexi turned the volume down a bit and then pressed the fast forward button. The system quickly searched all forty of its gigabytes of songs and then started to randomly play a new tune. This one, a bit more recent, was still a strange song that Lexi knew that she had never put on her player. Looking back down at the screen, she was puzzled to read, "Don't Fear the Reaper" by the Blue Oyster Cult.

"Okay, now this is getting a bit frustrating," she thought. She had only really planned on doing a quick exercise routine before heading home and back to bed but not being able to find a decent song to play on her iPod was making her life a bit more difficult. Once again, Lexi pressed the fast forward on her iPod and then waited to see what the display would return.

The sounds of a woman singing to a melody from a piano came into hear ears and she heard the lyrics, "And here I stand with this sword in my hand." Lexi stared down at the iPod and read the display. Once again, the display showed a strange but obscure song that she was not sure that she loaded on her iPod. This one, "Take to the Sky," was written by Tori Amos.

"And I do not even like her. Neither did Dylan and I know none of my friends are even hip enough to really listen to her ballads. So what gives. Who put this stuff on my iPod and where are my tunes?" Fear that someone had rifled through her bag at school filled her mind and Lexi started scrolling and clicking buttons through the iPod's interface. She saw many songs whizz by on the screen, all of them unfamiliar.

"Regrets" by Ben Folds
"Turning Wheel" by Sonny Landreth
"Black Magic Woman" by Santana

The iPod clicked and whirrled as it picked another song at random. Suddenly, her ears were filled with the sounds of "Shape of my Heart" by Sting. She closed her eyes and listened to the lyrics of the song as she thought about how she was going to have to wipe her pod when she got home and redo her entire library.

"He deals the cards as a meditation,
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn't play for the money he wins
He doesn't play for the respect
He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance," came Sting's voice from inside her iPod.

Lexi quickly turned the iPod off before the song could continue on any more. "Okay, I guess I am not going to be able to work out with all this noise. I have no idea what got into you," she said silently to the iPod, hoping that no one else in the room would hear here talking crazy. "Might as well go home and figure out what is going on. Because yeah, this is a bit freaky and I have no idea what is going on. I would hate to have to take you back to the store and get a new one."

Once home, Lexi took out her computer and iPod connector cable. She plugged one side into her computer and the other into the base of her iPod. She woke the computer up from its sleep mode and waited as the computer booted her music program and displayed all the tunes that were on her iPod and her system. Once it was completely loaded, she clicked on the tiny image of the iPod on the screen. What she saw next startled and confused her.

"What the hell is going on? This is getting weird," she said, shaking her head in disbelief. The screen showed that her iPod's library and the library she kept on her computer were identical. There were no traces of the songs she heard earlier anywhere on her system. None of the songs that it had played only minutes ago in the gym, were to be physically found on her iPod.