Chapter 1 - Introduction

   What most people call a rut, I call a routine. What most people call bored, I think of as the optimum state. I don't know how bored ever started to once get the bum rap it has these days. I know I grew up as a little girl on a working family farm ranch sort of affair. The right time of year? It had to be raining and I mean really storming, to get you a day off in front of the TV.

   Now compare the possible days. No bad rainstorm? Chores and labors, all work. Rainstorm brings, what. Boredom! That what the hell do I do with myself now feeling. The I'm not used to having to fill this big gap in myself, that feeling.

   Anyone that persists on arguing against bored as anything but a wonderful thing, I know what it is. You've never been in true peril before. It happens, and hey its great to life a life like that. I remember it fondly. But I've had periods where people were actively trying to kill me, and I much prefer boredom to being hunted like an animal.

   Man is a curious animal. We like to think of ourselves as top of the heap. Take the humble cow. To the average person, I'm sure its me human, me smart. Dumb cow. Asked to elucidate, the cow is exploited if its lucky for just its milk and even for a meat animal if its unlucky.

   And that's rational. I get it.

   Thing is, I grew up on a working farm ranch family spread. I don't care how big and strong and capable you are or think you are. You find yourself in a pen or other limited space with an animal over a thousand pounds going nuts? You'll get killed, quick. Tell me again, how man is the top of the food chain. At dinner time, you eat a hamburger. Okay, sure. You get cut off from an escape route in an enclosed pen and an animal you counted on to be stable and friendly that suddenly gets the devil in it, and... you're simply out of your weight class. Even dairy routinely tops the scales well over a thousand pounds each. And while usually quite docile and eager to please, they take you by surprise when one suddenly goes nuts.

   I'm actually comfortable around 1,000 to 2,000 pound animals. But I know the real pecking order, and that I should be looking for that constantly changing pecking order and carefully assessing it for myself. Because most humans around me, in general? Don't do a very good job.

   Swimming in the ocean. You, are simply bait-fish in this scenario. To especially sharks and a few other things in the ocean? They look up, and see us flapping around the weird way we do when we're in water. We're mammals, not fish.

   Looking up at us on the water, like a predator would? We pretty much look very similar to traditional shark food, the seal and walrus clan. You ain't no way, no how, at the top of the food chain every second you spend in the open ocean.

   If you don't know what you're doing in small inland ponds in certain areas of the country? Your dip in the water will be your last, and when you get your first clue something's wrong, it will already be too late.

   I give you? The humble leech.

   If they get to breeding in what gets called a leech bog or pond or other body of water... by the time you feel anything, there will already be too many on you. You can't feel them attaching, and they emit special chemicals so you can't feel them touch and attach. Like tiny sharks, if they get you into open water they can collectively swarm and take enough blood to weaken you and kill you before you reach shore.

   Each giant leech can draw so many cubic centimeters of blood. The human body, only has so many cubic centimeters of blood available. Several liters, as a matter of fact. With each liter being 1,000 cubic centimeters exactly, some simple math can tell you. Swarms of thousands of leeches, can drain you of all blood in a surprisingly short time.

   If you don't up the ante with a complete coverage diving suit, or something similar... the leech is winning, on its home turf. Those leeches in the right body of water? Can take down deer and even cows that try to cross the water. Human beings, lose to cows when push comes to shove and the cow really takes it to you in a serious manner.

   Watch the pecking order, I'm telling you. You go into the wrong pond, at the wrong time of the year? You're leech food.

   When I was real little, I learned the family and farm pecking orders. Then another one that worked a different way, when off the friends and family properties. School was another, each sport had its own pecking order. Every group of animals had its own line of command.

   Things naturally organize themselves, in that way. Often enough with violence or the threat of it. If I'm thinking yes and just one of my parents is thinking no, well, I'm going to lose that battle, every single time. If I watch what I'm doing, I can open and close gates and maneuver around a frisky 1,200 pound dairy cow. I can win. I can't pull that on my parents, I can't win.

   Its all about the pecking order. If you can wait for the right set of circumstances, you can adjust it temporarily or even permanently. If you can control or create the right circumstances, you can get the same effect. Things that confuse you as a kid and really get your goat? You think on these things. Sometimes, the answer you come up with seems profound and you can even carry a valuable life lesson with you the rest of your days.

   You don't know exactly what you're learning as a kid, and you won't find out until you're older and in some unfortunate situation whether it was valuable or not. I suppose my young lessons were good enough; I survived my situations by anything ranging from luck to planning.

   Lessons, though. I quickly learned I didn't have to be inordinately careful of the entire dairy herd. In fact, most of those big animals were downright friendly for nothing more than a soothing voice and a loving nose and chin scratch. A couple of them, though. I had to keep my eye on them at all times, even when they seemed stable. Cows can kick back and even out to the side, and its fast enough you'll never have the reaction time to see it coming let alone react. Those seemingly wild kicks can be amazingly accurate sometimes.

   Many years later, the human herd was much the same. Most are like dairy. The few bad apples are the couple of nuts in the bunch.

   My guy didn't have the normal and idyllic childhood and young adulthood I enjoyed. He was a late bloomer in his own words, but he seems to have more than made up for it. After a childhood around the family farm and ranch property, my next lesson bearing soil I trod was sports. A tall sturdy farm girl with big bones, there's an arc of colleges and universities that farm the farms for athletes.

   The big schools want big strong athletes, pure and simple. Most people marvel at the big giants the football teams find to man the lines in their games. Where in the hell do they find so many guys that tall, that thick, that muscular. Honestly? Go to any function where you get to eyeball a bunch of farm animal people. There's always a few farm boys that look like pro wrestlers out of costume.

   Family lines that have those monster sized men? Some sport "little ladies" that are anything but. My dad's one of those guys that look like a pro ball player out of uniform, but I'm not sure he touched a weight in his life. All the men from his side of the family look like that. At the big summer family reunions, you can see a kid 6'4", 240 pounds of thick muscle? And he's the wallflower, the runt of the litter.

   Around family, I'm just another one of the girls. Away from family and all those huge men though, I'm no longer normal. I'm a credit card under six foot tall, and I have dad's thick bones. Women are acutely aware of their appearance, and I'm no exception. I know that if a guy sees me from a ways off, with no one around to judge my size by? I'm one thing. But when they get close to right up on me, and suddenly realize it I can see it on their faces and body language.

   When people use the phrase "big girl", they're typically referring to a fat girl and being polite. While as an adult I no longer diet and exercise like I did as a starting college athlete for years, I didn't want to end up like a lot of the older women in my family. Tall, cute chubby Italian girls.

   I walk and hike although I refuse to live half my life in a gym for vanity. I'm really not fat. At six foot tall, with dad's big bones and the big hips and thighs with an hourglass shape? Again, as a woman I'm acutely aware of what I know I look like. In jeans and T shirts or even in sweats, most people think I look a little chubby.

   You don't see the real me, until you see me in shorts or swimwear. My chubby legs? Aren't at all. My family line gave me an hourglass shape, and the curves to my calves and thighs and hips. When you poke my big legs? Solid as wood.

   Thank god I'm feminine enough all over, and just big. My guy? Makes me feel normal. All the way around. He's not huge to me, at a couple hairs over 6'1". In my family, he's actually considered a little small for a guy, going around 215 or so normally. But he fights guys so much bigger than he is, that I'm nothing special to him.

   Its not the only way he makes me feel normal, either. My normal childhood, my normal young adulthood. My seemingly normal pace and path for being a student athlete at a big university. I ended up falling love with a guy 4 years older than I was, because he'd been in the service before college. More or less an MP, he ended up rallying his troops who all worked in the real world as law enforcement, on a big case.

   It cost him his life, and I saw him shot to death in front of my own eyes. His blood and guts instantaneously clogged my eyes and mouth, and I watched him drain away in front of my eyes on the ride to the hospital he would never make it to.

   I had already changed, but from that moment on in my life? I was different. Like some combat veteran, I had picked up the thousand yard stare and the unemotional face and posture. A monster came to live inside me, and I had a monster's face. I had to learn to hide, I had to learn to make masks and faces and body gestures that went with it.

   I felt practically no emotions, and they didn't show on my face or on my body. It took a couple years to learn to hide behind masks and my act.

   But my boyfriend I met quite by chance? Suddenly made me feel normal. I slowly learned I could drop my face around him, and not only did he not mind it, what was more he liked it. I saw him drop his own face and body language for the first time, and marveled at it. He could do? What I could do!

   We both made faces, and hid the monster inside from the outside world, wearing masks. He spent years as a military contractor after getting out of the service, before returning to what he called the real world. We found each other.

   While the man that actually shot my boyfriend and changed my life forever got shot immediately after, one of the dirty cops in on the conspiracy went to state prison for his role. When he got paroled years later, I ended up getting my revenge fulfilled.

   What I didn't bargain for, was what happened afterwards. I thought I was having a giant nervous breakdown, and would end up in a straitjacket. But after a couple days of hell, I realized what had happened. My shut down emotions, that had protected me back then. Suddenly gave way and after the initial explosion, I could feel real emotions again.

   Its been over a year, and I still marvel at it. I actually feel guilty, that I can feel emotions again. Because they show on my face. My boyfriend? Was born with all the normal range of human emotions, they just can't show on his face or through his body language. I'm glad I can still drop my face when I'm alone with him. I feel like we're both cripples in wheelchairs? Now by some miracle I can walk again.

   My life's crazy. I'm an FBI agent, but I've lived under my cover name and life so long, that it kind of became me. Remember. I knew what my boyfriend's blood and guts tasted like. Becoming someone else, permanently? Not a bad deal there, at all.

   Honestly, you'd think being undercover for years, working a national criminal biker gang case would be the main source of anything life threatening? But not so much in my case. That part of my life, is the smooth and easy going and predictable portion. The dangerous bikers around me? I thought of them as more protecting me from the dirty cops trying to kill me, than I felt any danger from being around them.

   Welcome to my crazy world. Outlaw bikers? Predictable, and protective. Cops? Dirty, unpredictable and deadly. Never once, did it ever cease to amaze me. Now, what else would just quickly finish meeting me off, huh.

   Doesn't every woman have a body part they wish they could change? I guess mine's my feet. I know they're feminine enough, my hands and feet. Years spent in girls locker rooms would have gotten me teased unless mine pass muster. No, they look fine. They're just like the rest of me, okay but just too damn big.

   My 5,6,7 number? I know this off by heart from childhood games. In work outfits, I'm a five something. In jeans and T shirts, I crack into the sixes. If I show enough leg in shorts or better yet just wear a swimsuit? I can land into a low seven, if the guy is okay with big legs and a big girl in general. Yeah, my whole life. I get a disclaimer. Number could be a little higher, but she's just too damn big to hide it.

   Once again. My boyfriend? Acted from day one like nothing was amiss. When I took him skinny dipping at a deep creek, he noticed my feet while I was laying on the rocks. I could see it pass his face. We just swapped shoes and he thought it was a curiosity.

   I finally asked. He said I shouldn't have a complex about it. Yeah. I have big feet. But, he pointed out about all of me is big. He added that if I had small feet? He would have been suspicious. He's either blunt or sweet at all times, its just him. When he dragged it out of me, that it was my childhood one thing I carried with me even though I knew better as an adult? He did what he does in those situations. He grins, he puts his arms around me, and he talks into my neck, just for me.

   The human microphone, talking into their neck. I love it. My guy hissed into my neck, that he knew he wanted something different for the perfect girlfriend for him.

   "See, I was filling out forms. For a new girlfriend. The Chinese are in the market now, and all of a sudden I can maybe afford a girl like I always wanted before. Normally, I like girls with multiple college degrees, and it just prices me out of the market. Christ, one little degree? Not ugly? There they go, marrying a plastic surgeon before they're 30."

   I went through the show of trying to dislodge his arms around my waist from behind. Giggling while I tried to "stop" him.

   "Oh. I'm cheap Chinese goods now, huh?"

   "Sure are. How else, would I ever be able to afford the perfect girl, like I always wanted."

   "Like you picked me out of a wall of pictures, at the pound."

   "I checked off things. I messed up, but it worked. For instance. It said, cute or ugly. I mean, I figured I can only afford an ugly girl, once she has a degree? But what the hell. I stuck in high school diploma, and three college degrees."

   "In point of fact? I have four. I qualified for two different masters, only cost me another year."

   "I loved the idea. Then? I had cute, I had educated. There were suggestions. One stood out. I mean, I was up late, placing my order. What do you expect. Suggestions. I had cute girl, over educated. Did I think I would like a big cute girl? I clicked yes."

   I pulled and twisted with more faux energy now. We were both laughing.

   "Hey. I thought it was how the young kids talk. Cute, or big cute. Big cute. I mean, she can come cute, or really cute. Figured really cute would be better. Course, once I opened the cardboard. Got the foam peanuts off you, popped all the bubble wrap. Oh. I saw what they meant. I mean, from the outside of the box, thought it was all just extra padding, for shipping, but... they meant a big, cute girl."

   "You should have sent me back!"

   "No way. You think I never got the wrong flashlight or laser, from China before on shipping? I just keep the one they send. You, big feet and all? Once I charged you up, played with you some... hey, I could get used to this. Big feet, more room for bigger batteries, right? Always a good deal on a flashlight."

   And just like that, my childhood childish phobia about my big ass feet, dissipated. He's a leg man, and he likes to run his fingers up and down my legs, tracing out the leg muscles. While we both have our faces dropped, and would scare children and normal people if they saw.

   I catch him staring at my ankles. Twice as much, if I wear one of my little charms on my ankle. He says its his favorite thing ever, and would have never known before me.

   I guess there really is someone for everyone. Even when yours is long gone, they sometimes send another one around, in case you notice. I seized my second chance, and never looked back once.

   My patented insanity? Everybody can have one and still be normal, am I right? Mine, I believe he's my dead boyfriend they killed. Sent back to me. Because it was meant to be, because he wanted his own revenge. Because he wanted to be there for me, seeing what was coming for me.

   Once again? He indulges me. He died and was brought back around the time just after mine got shot in front of my eyes. The things he does, the things that come out of his mouth, everything. He's a carbon copy in so many ways, I can't believe its a coincidence.

   I know its irrational. Part of me realizes I just like believing it, because it makes me feel better. Other times? Just when I'm ready to rationalize it all away as Jungian synchronicity, there he'll go as if on cue. Saying or acting just like he would.

   When I close my eyes? I can smell him. And I mean, smell my dead boyfriend. Its how I found him, waiting on a crowded steakhouse restaurant in the city. I closed my eyes, and wished like always, for... and there it was, the smell hit me like a ton of bricks.

   So there I am. I have strengths and weaknesses, and little things like any person has.

   He spent a long time, making sure time and again that I was actually over my childhood silly thing. I'm too big, if only I didn't have these big ass feet. When he finally believed me assuring him that it was fine. He finally started teasing me about my big feet and being big in general. And honestly, what better therapy is there. That what used to most bug you and trouble you as a child? You get just the right partner sent to you, and they not only make it okay? They turn it into the thing they love most about you.

   When he got shot and died, you can't believe what's happening right in front of your eyes. He didn't seem to care in the least that he was dying and knew it. After the requisite I love you's and all that, he said he had very little time, and it was important.

   When someone doesn't seem concerned they're obviously dying, and more over than even that, they're more concerned with telling you something they feel is important? You shut up and you let them go. He had two things he had to get out. One? Him and his karma. The universe did this for a reason, it was making me into something it needed. I was to just go with it, and give what the universe wanted from me.

   I already wanted that by that time, believe me. Seeing what him and his MP buddies were like. The love, the trust. They had a code, and they lived by it. It really meant something to them. They were closer than family, and they lived their lives by their code. Half of his dying breath, he spent on me and my karma.

   I already wanted what he had, what they all had. Their precious code. They put that code first, it actually meant something to them, and they lived their lives by it. They made hard choices, that often enough didn't benefit them personally? But hey, it was the right thing to do.

   He's dying on his deathbed? He can smile. He still believes it. I knew right then and there. I wanted that, for myself. I promised him. I meant it. To me, that's how I became an agent of karma.

   The other half of his pocket change he had left to spend, final air wise? He believed his childhood dog he loved beyond all else, came back to him. In another dog's body. He had to see it in the eyes, the dog was trying to tell him. And once he saw it, he got another couple years with him again.

   He said it would be okay. He had lived and now died, under his precious code. He would come back. He wouldn't know, but it was up to me to find him. Like he had found his dog, I could find him. I promised him, I would look for him.

   I could believe he was just trying to make me feel better, but I hadn't known until after his funeral that he had written letters out, before he had met his end. Just in case something would happen, the letters said. I'll instruct my dad to burn them after its over, but just in case? Will letters.

   He devoted his planned out letters, just in case? To largely the same two topics. Karma, and his reincarnation he knew about because of a couple extra years with his dog again. He described it all in such excruciating detail, that he clearly believed it.

   Years later, when I had a touch of a bad day, and wished silently in my head like always. Where are you. I'm still looking. I still really miss you, you know.

   Then, bang. I thought I'd lost it. My tummy did flip flops. I felt dizzy or unsteady and weak. I had tingles. I shook my head to get my bearings, bumped my ass into a customer's chair, and... it was no hallucination. The smell of him, all around me? It was him. Right there.

   That reward, having him sent back to me. That, was enough. The universe was being too good to me. Rewarding me, for adhering first and foremost to my adopted karma code. That was enough. Hell, that was more than enough, right there. Then after some more years, already feeling like the luckiest girl ever put on earth.

   I got my emotions back.

   It was too much. I feel guilty. But, its what the universe wants. Is the universe done with me, finally? Or, is it refining me and I have something left to do. I can't know. Karma, just is.

   That's not the only reminder of him that I carry with me. PTSD. Trauma. It burns in images, and flashes them at you afterwards. Its normal after a highly traumatic event, completely normal. Its only PTSD, when it doesn't go away eventually, like it should.

   So yeah. I see a little movie. Its on repeat, as long as I look. Short little clip, full color and realistic in every way. He smiles, he shrugs. What can you even do. Thanks god I was close in to his face and upper body, and the canoe shaped grievous wound isn't visible in my little movie I seem to carry for life.

   I got out of all therapy afterwards. What was the point. Every symptom of my trauma, became a unique asset in some way. It was uncanny. Even down to having a monster live inside me, and it showed on my face. I had to learn to do masks, and faces, and body language like a cripple learning to walk again. And that, became my biggest asset.

   Undercover bureau agents? Are actors. They live in their role. They actually become someone else, for years. Once it happened? Yeah. That's what the universe wanted from me.

   It just wanted an even more capable karma agent.

   Not much left now to introduce myself. I got the heavy stuff out of the way. What. I'm a Leo, and I'm not just a big strong girl, I'm physical and aggressive in bed, too. Rough and kinky.

   He swears that's another one of the little surprises he got, opening up his flashlight that came in the box from China. By mistake.