Annie MacGregor/Sunshine MacGillicutty

Virginia/Scotland

Annie decided it was time to use some of her accumulated airline miles…. It was time to go back to Scotland. She wrote to her two cousins, John and Richard Hayman. They both lived on the west coast of this beautiful country and she had visited them three times before, back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Their mother, who had passed on many years ago, was her Great Aunt. Annie’s mother had been named after her, and Annie as well. The two brothers, both married and with families, lived within a few miles of each other. Annie hoped to begin her journey visiting them and then,as before, take off with her backpack,eventually returning to them.

After several phone calls, they had agreed upon a mutually acceptable set of dates. “Man, (1) Life is great ! I’ll be in Scotland in a few weeks. Hmmmmm…… The last time I was there, my hair was long, Paul McCartney and Wings were still going strong and my body was MUCH younger,much more pliable and sturdy.”

She eyed her backpack……… “Are you out of your mind?!”

She called the travel agent, made reservations for a rental car to be at Prestwick, and got out her suitcases…….”Ahhh. MUCH more sensible. Now all I need to be concerned about is causing havoc by being on the “wrong” side of the road.”

Because Annie had so many frequent flier miles, she decided to go first class, so she could REALLY sleep during the long flight. She had but one big concern. “How will I ever live without my computer?”

Annie loved being on YA. She spent most of her time writing stories and posting her beloved “Paragraph” questions for others to answer. “Well, I’ll do what smokers do when they want to kick the habit. I’ll bring LOTS of gum ……WAIT!! I know!! I’ll bring some hand-held video game of some sort. Maybe daily dabbling with a technical object will lessen the withdrawal symptoms I’m sure to experience!”

Annie knew she was going to miss writing her stories…..

99 % of them dealt with Matt Dillon, of “Gunsmoke” fame. Her alter-ego, Sunshine MacGillicutty and Matt were two lovers in the Old West….more specifically, Dodge City, Kansas. All the characters of this wonderful show appeared in her countless stories……She had made only one alteration. Miss Kitty was no longer Matt’s love interest…..SHE was, or rather, Sunshine, was.

As Sunshine boarded the plane, her excitement grew. After switching planes in New York she was on her way to the land of her ancestors. Annie liked that feeling. She very much needed a family connection. She was pretty much alone in this world……. “Oh, no you don’t, Annie. You are NOT on a pity trip……You’re on a plane trip. Snap out of it.” As she reclined in her VERY comfortable,VERY expensive seat she started thinking about Matt and Sunshine. She of course was playing out all her fantasies, via her stories. She and Matt had what she considered, the perfect relationship. She grinned broadly, thinking about their many escapades. Pretty soon she was singing a song that Sunshine had written for Matt. Annie was oblivious to anyone or anything…..She sang softly and was lost in her beautiful world where Matt and Sunshine were almost joined at the hip……..

♫ ” If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks.

Then I’ll follow you into the dark….♫”

This song had touched Annie deeply when she first heard it on youtube…She KNEW that Sunshine could have written it for Matt.

Annie fell asleep before long. For ONCE, she had a dream about Matt Dillon…..In all his glorious splendor!!

DREAM:

(2) He was standing in the doorway. The doorway of a castle. (3) The castle looked foreboding……. So did Matt’s expression.

He was looking at Sunshine with such an intensity that her heart pounded. His stoic face seemed cold, unwelcoming. Sunshine was horrified. Then, as if in answer to her silent pleas, (5) The “ice” melted to reveal a frightened expression….”Have I lost you, Sunshine? Have you left me?” Annie ran into his arms. After all, she and Sunshine were the same person.

Annie woke up, softly moaning……. “Oh, Matt…….. Matt…..(4) I was spellbound, unable to move! You freed me. I love you…. I love you, baby…..”

A voice , ever so gently, entered her thoughts………

♫”When the lights have left the skies and when the lights have left my eyes, I’ll love you forever, that’s all that I can say. That I will love you, forever…………..♫”

Annie smiled. These were words to a song that she had written to her husband, many years ago…..When they were dating. She remembered singing it to him…… in the last few months of his life. It was one of her better songs and was dear to her heart.

Annie slowly woke up. Still in a sleepy haze, she looked around . A man was sitting next to her.

Annie, to herself….”Hmmm…Don’t remember seeing him, before.” He was sleeping on his side , his face partially hidden. He seemed vaguely familiar.

As he turned his head toward her, Annie gasped!!!

(6) Could this be posssible?!

TO BE CONTINUED.

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO:

Life is precious. I know, that’s a rediculous thing for an assasin to say. But here I am, saying it. Life is precious.

Being an assasin means killing people. I get that. But does that mean that I can’t have any respect for life? Far from it. It’s being an assasin that teaches me how much life truly is valuable. I learned it the hard way.

This was… two years ago, more or less. Two and a half. I was scheduled for a difficult job (I had to kill the personal doctor of the British Prime minister so that we could poison the royal family). When I woke up that morning, I was the old me. Cold, ruthless, etc. I’m sure you could imagine. I got dressed, grabbed my gun and my bag (which contained things a lot more lethal than bullets) and headed out the door of my hotel.

I honestly have no idea why the royal family stays in a castle. It seems really outdated to me. But that’s where I found myself. Looking across the lake through the twilight at a castle that anyone else would’ve found rather forbidding. Lightning and everything.

I went in through the front door, like all the other tourists. My plastic explosives and resin-ceramic gun didn’t set off any alarms. I went straight to the bathroom, waited for people to forget that they saw me, and ran upstairs. The mark (target, for those of you who don’t know) was staying on the second floor, in a servant’s chamber. I found the room.

I picked the lock and went inside. Being in this business, you learn to always close the door behind you. I did. The room was empty, however. It was time to play the waiting game. Now, most assassins would sit on the couch and wait for him to come throught the door. I, myself, suffer from an overwhelming adversity to boredom. So I looked around. I broke into his study. There, on his desk, were huge binders full of patient’s information. I opened one.

“Newton, Michelle.” It was a little girl, a cancer patient. Chronic. In that moment, I realized that all of these people were going to die without a doctor. Binders full. And it would be my fault. The ice in my consciousness melted to reveal the reality of what I had been doing all my life. I was spellbound, unable to move. Tears came to my eyes. Could this be possible? Could I really be the cause of so much pain? So much death…

A key moved in the door. I restored the desk to its original state and quickly materialized in the common room. He was standing in the doorway, key still in the door, looking at me. I spoke. “I’m just cleaning a bit. I was actually just leaving.”

And I went back to the hotel that day with no blood on my hands.

Life is strange. It was 1944. I was attending Wichita University, and the group of girls I belonged to was having a mixer. The dance was being held in Threlkeld Hall, which was one of the older buildings on campus, resembling a castle. I remember it was late in the fall, and the castle looked foreboding as I scurried towards it that night, especially with Halloween close at hand.

I was late, and as I hurried into the ballroom, I could see that they had already begun one of the “cute” games they devised to force us to meet new people. All the men had thrown their left shoes into a pile in the middle of the dance floor. The women were to pick a shoe from the pile and find the man who was wearing its mate on his right foot. That was the man we were to dance the next dance with.

When I entered the ballroom and figured out what we were doing, I was spellbound, unable to move. There was only one shoe left, and it was as big as a ski! I hefted the gargantuan wingtip into my arms and started hunting for its owner.

Finally, I determined that we was standing in the doorway, over by the refreshment table. Could this be possible? He was a very tall, handsome man, sporting what was then a fashionable pompadour.

We enjoyed that dance, and several more that evening. The ice melted to reveal a man that was as nice as he was handsome. When I graduated from college, I married him. We raised three children, and had 60 happy years together.

Could this be possible??? I mean… C’MON! Here I was on a cold, wintery day in December… lying on my back frozen to a snowbank. How the HELL did I get here?!?! Life is weird sometimes, I know, but this was REALLY weird. All’s I know is that I was minding my OWN business walking alone in the snow…. and **BAM!** I get knocked down to the ground by SOMETHING (though I don’t know WHAT) and find myself… on my back… and okay… I can live with a slip and fall here and there, but STUCK on my back to a snowbank? I mean, C’MON!!! And here I was… on my back… staring at what appeared to be a castle… now not just any castle, mind you… this castle, well… the castle looked foreboding… don’t ask me why, it just did. Anyways, I wondered when and how long I would be stuck here. What would I tell my folks when I got home?…”Honey, how come you are late again?” “Oh, Mom, Pops,… you wouldn’t believe this, but I was just walking along, and somehow got bopped on the head and was frozen on my back to a snowbank for 7 long hours… You know how those things happen?”(… Yeah right, as if they’re gonna believe that!) So here I was, lying on my back stuck to a snowbank…. Man, what kind of luck was this? I mean, sure, I’m a single gal… still waiting for my Prince to come… yeah, yeah, yeah… But what’s the rush??? Okay…. well maybe it’s because I’m a princess… but just because I’m a princess, does that make a difference? If it does, it shouldn’t. Well, just as I was about to lose my cool, I saw the drawbridge leading to the castle starting to melt. Yes,… because it had been up all day, snow had collected on it and had iced the bridge over. But what I was about to see was just UNBELIEVABLE! As the ice on the drawbridge began to melt, the ice melted to reveal….. the most handsomest Prince that one could imagine! Ah! He just took my breath away… I was spellbound… unable to move! (ha ha, VERY funny,… don’t rub that last part in!) There he was… standing in the doorway of the castle standing as manly as could be… and LOOKING RIGHT AT ME!!!! OMG!!! ME??? “Yes, silly you, you silly princess, who else? I mean, do you see anyone else around here? Wake up and smell the coffee!”, his presence, the grin on his face, the look in his eyes… they all seemed to indicate. And there he was, strong, manly, twinkles in those deep blue eyes of his…. with his right arm outstretched…. and his index finger beckoning to me to “come hither”. I don’t know how long it was, but all the excitement warmed the back of my back melting the ice that glued me to the snowbank. And that is how I met my Prince Charming. I know it sounds really silly, but it’ll be an interesting and very entertaining story to tell the grandkids about, well, maybe when they are older…

I had been in Angels Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Petco Park and something the title is of that sauna in Miami in Red Sox equipment. Everyone treats you with appreciate/ignores you, besides the Yankee fanatics. There is simply too a lot historical past there. It makes it amusing. As in your enjoy, I would under no circumstances appreciate why a Yankee fan could exhibit up at Fenway for a Red Sox–Tigers recreation in Yankee equipment. Wear Tiger equipment for Heaven’s sake. Of direction you’re going to be probably the most loathed man or woman within the park. Actually dressed in a Yankee hat within the City of Boston isn’t the brightest of actions as a commonplace subject.