“Have a great day!” she said, still smiling.
Travis made his way toward his favorite table alongside a row of windows on the far side of the cafeteria. Windows to more normalcy — trees, blue skies, and birds.
News? What “news,” and where had that question come from? He’d surely heard it, clear as day. He again glanced back to the cashier and the line. The girl was already handing back change to another customer.
Travis passed a newspaper someone held up. The headline declared, in big, bold, black print:
Children at Play!
Coming upon another table, a smiling bald guy with a big, bushy mustache and a gold earring, juggled and performed magic tricks for an intimate gathering of people.
Magic tricks?
Juggling — in the cafeteria?
Had he heard the news?
Travis arrived at his table and sat, half expecting that Le-Whatever person — what had been his name?—to be seated before him (and why had he?). He rubbed his eyes and forehead and looked out the window. His window to every day — normal — life.
What had been that guy’s name? Lou? Leigh? Lee-something…
Travis broke open one of his iced teas and took a deep chug. Brief images of parachutes and full moons breezed through his mind. The bottle was cold and wet, the tea good. Travis turned his attention to his cheeseburger and found himself much hungrier than expected. The hot, dripping burger tasted better than any other burger he’d ever had. It was absolutely incredible… it was so good he didn’t want to swallow… just wanted to continue chewing and chewing and chewing to culinary orgasm — the burger, the cheese… the onion and relish!
Man, what had they done to this thing?
Travis took another sip of tea and was almost overcome by the intensity of the slightly sweet, musky, bouquet of the beverage. It hadn’t tasted like that a moment ago… had it mixed with the Olympian tastes of the burger? He could even feel the tea and burger traveling down his throat and into his stomach…
Okay, this wasn’t normal. No one felt food heading into their stomach!
Travis put down the burger, sat back, and gripped the edge of the table. It was happening again, wasn’t it?… things were getting weird again…
(have you heard the news?)
(children at play!)
(magic!)
There was a weightiness to this weirdness that felt different from this morning… like an ocean of water
(Titanic)
pressing down on him.
Something was wrong.
People were still walking about, talking, eating—
But, there was no longer any background chatter… that hubbub of constant noise and activity associated with rush-hour
(restaurants)
cafeterias, and people eating and talking and going about their lunch-hour business.
Was that guy still juggling?
The cashier still making change?
Were they even real?
Any of this?
He looked back out the windows.
For all he knew, there was nothing outside this haunting little microcosm of his… the table, tray, iced tea, and partially eaten cheeseburger (which he so desperately needed to get back to)…
Outside there were no taskings, compartmentalized vaults, rules, nor national interests. No secrecies. Only trees and shrubs. Dirt and rocks. Birds. Sun.
Reality.
Travis closed his eyes. It was like… a tsunami… it was coming, all right… subtle and deep… but the closer it got, the more power built up behind it, as it approached his shores. He couldn’t put it off, couldn’t… stop… it…
Please, oh please, let there be nothing weird… let there still be a world, an existence, so when I open my eyes, I can finish the best damned cheeseburger in the world… please, make it so…
Travis let out a huge, resigned, sigh, and opened his eyes.
Hundreds upon hundreds of children sat packed in the cafeteria.
Every one of them stared at him.
Gone were the juggler, the newspaper reader, the cashier. Gone were all the lunch-bunch eaters. In place of them were all these wide-eyed and smiling six year olds. Girls and boys.
On the floor before him was a poster, something he might see stapled to a telephone pole, perhaps. It proclaimed Have You Heard The News?, and had multiple worn staple holes and tears on it; was weathered, stained, and faded. Had a boot print on it.
Travis looked back to the children.
Still there.
Still smiling.
Out from somewhere to his left, and coming into his field of view, calmly strode a man of indeterminate age, dressed in an open flannel shirt over a black AC/DC T-shirt, jeans… and hiking
(boot print)
boots? He, too, was all smiles, and sat down directly across the table from him.
Did he know this guy?
The man reached across the table and grabbed the unopened tea.
“Travis — always good to see you. And thanks for picking this up for me.”
The Man With No Name opened the tea and took a long swig. “Not as good as mine, but damn good just the same,” he said with a satisfied sigh and a swipe of the mouth with the back of the hand still holding the bottle. He set down the bottle and looked between Travis and the kids. “Oh!,” he said, chuckling, “you’re probably wondering ‘what the hell’! Lemme introduce you.”
The Man With No Name stood, and with a carny like sweep of a hand before him from Travis to children, he said, “Children… meet Travis Norton, the government psychic I’ve been telling you so much about. Travis Norton… meet… the New Breed…”
2
Lizzie Gordon tossed her Sonic Drive-In trash into the waste barrel, as she exited the drive-thru. She loved their bacon cheeseburgers and vanilla root beers. Joe had also loved them.
When he’d still walked this Earth.
They used to occasionally meet for lunch at Sonics throughout town. Now, all she had were memories.
Why was it that with all her so-called psychic prowess, prowess she’d had since birth, prowess she used so accurately and freely to solve so many other people’s problems, little Lizzie Gordon couldn’t seem to solve her own… little Lizzie Gordon (gave her lover forty whacks…) couldn’t even contact her recently dead husband in the afterlife?
Just what the hell was her problem?
Lizzie took a right out of the parking lot, drove up the twenty-or-so feet to the intersection, then made a left at the light. She followed the street to another intersection, preparing to head uphill, when a billboard caught her eye:
“Love: it’s not about Joe, Lizzie, it’s about the New Breed.”
Lizzie slammed on the brakes, skidding off onto the shoulder in a cloud of dust and gravel.
She twisted around in her seat to again catch the sign, but could no longer make it out from her angle. Swinging a U-turn, she raced back down the hill, then pulled another U-ey. Heart racing, Lizzie again looked up to the sign. This time she pulled off to the side of the road in a more controlled manner.
“Love: it’s what New Life Church is all about. The New Breed of religion.”
Okay… guilt about Joe… lunch where they used to eat… and the recently added stress of the most unnerving and frightening scarecrow, Mr. Black.
Lizzie checked traffic and pulled back out onto the street.
You’d think being psychic solved a lot of one’s ills, but with such super powers came super challenges. Somehow, Lizzie knew Joe was okay, but she was still human, and still in love with him. Time does heal all wounds, but it had only been a year since his death, and they’d had a deeper connection than most, given her (so-called) extraordinary abilities. She could safely say this because she’d dealt with so many relationship questions and issues in her job. Many people, it seemed to her, married for all the wrong reasons. Money, sex, loneliness (her mother had once told her you didn’t marry everyone you loved), fairy tale fantasies… thin
king they could change those they married from their evil ways. Then there were issues like mid-life crises… complacency and boredom… or those couples who really did adore and love each other at one point… only to become too damn busy in their daily lives and choose the “easy way” out. Trade in the old in-need-of-a-good-washing vehicle for something brand-spanking new without even bothering to give so much as a little bit of extra elbow grease and attention — or a car wash — to the current one. People wanted shiny and new, no effort. The Throw-away Society.
Or, perhaps, there was another reason, Lizzie thought: TV and the Internet. Computers. Short and flashy. And it wasn’t so much the media, per se, but the minds and mindsets behind them. Those idiots, if she may use the term, only focused on one thing, and one thing only: money. Of course, if you focused in on the young, unattached, sex-starved and hormonally exploding demographic you were going to sell sex and flesh like no tomorrow. Heck, any demographic. The flood of such material into everything — the pure availability of it — was bound to have its effect on everyone — consciously or not. And this said nothing about cheapening the entire sexual experience itself. All the hype and flooding of the senses through sex and beautiful bodies was sure to affect many a relationship on one level or another, confusing the issues of many who were on the fence to begin with. People were just going to have to get tougher, more choosey. Learn that the grass was not always greener on the other side. Never, in the history of humanity, had people had so many choices. So many perceived options.
In her humble opinion and experience.
But, perhaps, what also affected Lizzie and her emotions, and certainly didn’t help matters, was that being genuinely psychic she did still feel Joe out there… somewhere. There was no longer any such “Til death do us part” concept. She just couldn’t contact him.
But, it was almost like he was trying to get in touch with her.
And that brought up all kinds of issues.
Like… was all this emotion hers — or Joe’s?
For all her insight and advertised prowess, why was she having so much difficulty dealing with Joe’s passing? She didn’t miss him in the oh-we-have-but-one-life-to-live sense… all souls, she knew, live unimaginably multiple lives, and this life was just one of them — but she missed him in the sense that she missed his presence… and that she was only human and had so loved the man… that it had only been a year since his death — one tiny, insignificant historical barely-a-blink of an eye — and she still hadn’t yet, apparently (psychic or not) gotten over that. According to her way of thinking, she should have. Moved on. But something kept her reliving the same old emotions, the same old tape…
Lizzie pulled into a parking lot and stopped.
Sheesh, get over it, lady!
Everything happens for a reason, and this might not have anything to do with you… maybe it’s some issue in one of Joe’s other lives that brought on his death. Just because you can’t figure it out doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Maybe it was—
Lizzie gasped.
She’d found herself in absolutely the last place she’d ever wanted to be.
Her car sat idling in the parking lot of the last structure Joe had built — the very same lot where Jeff Skopchek had made a name for himself in the local news.
It may no longer have been the construction site as she’d known it… but it was Harbor Gardens Apartments… and it was here Joe had met his anything-but-graceful demise, one that should well have been prevented. A demise that should well have been foreseen by The World’s Greatest Psychic.
Lizzie put the car in reverse and stepped on the accelerator — but it didn’t move. The pedal wouldn’t press to the floor. She looked into the foot well.
Something was wedged beneath the pedal.
A small plastic toy.
“Oh, geez…”
She tried to toe the toy out from under the pedal, but it wouldn’t budge. Putting the car into park and gear into neutral, Lizzie again tried to free the annoying plastic obstacle. This time it came loose.
A large, yellow, rubber ducky.
Yellow.
Squeezing it once, she tossed it into the back seat. Grabbing the handle of the parking brake, Lizzie was ready to release it, when…
She was no longer at Harbor Gardens.
She now sat before a brand-new construction zone… complete with the grunt and grit of heavy equipment, construction workers, and the not-yet-complete apartment building.
Harbor Gardens — to be.
Lizzie couldn’t think, couldn’t move.
She was suddenly and inexplicably back at the old construction site, and there, a long stone’s throw away, was none other than her husband, Joseph Michael Gordon… alive and well and vibrant… currently directing what had been his construction crew.
Lizzie tried to say — do — anything, but was frozen in place, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the brake. All around were heavy equipment, girders, concrete, and men. Cranes lifting and moving and swinging steel about into the air. The smell and black puff of diesel exhaust from engines and trucks noisily backing up and hauling material about the job site. The occasional, indistinct shouts of men above construction din.
Lizzie didn’t feel so great.
Joe was alive and real — in motion — before her. His gym-fed muscular frame supported by powerful legs. She watched him direct his men with a rolled-up set of construction plans.
Memories of his touch… his voice… those concerned little comical looks he used to give her—
Then she saw him.
Skopchek.
She didn’t have to see him clearly through the crane’s dirtied and scratched cabin windows… she felt him. He was operating the crane.
Whether or not the absolute love of her life was again alive and about to reenact his gruesome death, this was the first and only time Lizzie had ever had a visit or vision of him after his passing… and no matter how painful this was going to be, Lizzie couldn’t and wouldn’t look away. Watching Joe, Lizzie was surprised at how easy it was to fall back into the old ways. How easy it was to convince herself he was still alive! She’d always been proud of him, but it was indescribably weird how it actually felt like he was really there — living and breathing again.
That they were together again.
A short but hot spat of tears burst forth from a part of her soul that, for all her intellectualization, had apparently still not healed. Her pride in him had taken on a new depth. Scared her.
This had never happened before, not on this level.
One-ton I-beams were swung about above Joe’s head, and he, she knew and watched, wasn’t the least bit concerned about them. She looked to his bright yellow hard hat. All the years he’d worn that goddamned silly thing to protect that beautiful head of his had been a joke. A hideous, horrendous, joke. It wasn’t like she’d expected it to save him from a falling girder, but, good Christ, lesser miracles had been known to happen. Why couldn’t that hat had slid off his head at just the right moment with that screaming harbinger of death? Would that have been such a huge miracle to ask for?
Or, why not have had that damned steel missile fly into Skopchek’s head, instead? He’d been the one screwing around — the one whose life had been falling apart — not Joe, Joe’s life had been great. Joe’s life had been wonderful — perfect; Joe’s life had been with her. Why had Joe been the one to get his Rockin Sockin block knocked the fuck off?
She couldn’t turn away.
It was coming, and there was nothing she could do about it.
He stood there, her Joe, all proud and confident, performing the work he was meant to do, full of vibrant personality and energy.
Why hadn’t she seen that huge chunk of steel in his future?
Why hadn’t she felt his life and her world come crashing to an abrupt end — and stopped it?
Lizzie gripped the steering wheel with both hands, unable to stem the flood of emotion, knuckles white and clenche
d, beginning to hurt.
Stop this! Change, dammit — take me, take me!
But that wasn’t to be. She knew what had already been… and this time… this time, she was going to be allowed to actually watch it happen — with her own eyes — not any imaginative mind’s-eye projection, no psychic TV screen, which, up to now, had been all she’d had. No, now, for some reason, she was being given the rare opportunity — yea, privilege — to actually see her beloved cut down and killed before her very eyes… in all its Technicolor gory.
Lizzie could no longer sit still.
Her entire body trembling, her breathing short and shallow, she got out of the car and stood — trembling — hand to mouth watching her paranormal movie. Joe going about his work, oblivious to what lies in his immediate
(minutes away!)
future.
Had he had any feelings something was up before he died?
Lizzie watched as Joe laughed and joked with the crew. Watched as he finished showing the plans — or whatever had been rolled up — to another foreman, rolled them back up, then tucked them under an arm. Watched as he walked toward a stack of girders, all confident and happy with himself and his place in the world, and felt him inhale the mixture of diesel exhaust and dirt, hear that “beep-beep” of backing up front-end loaders. Joe then pulled out the plans, again, looking them over. He didn’t see, nor care about, the I-beam that floated recklessly above… an I-beam, Lizzie noticed, that was curiously dark… an I-beam that — yes — actually looked black.
Dark black.
The others, she noticed, were reddish-brown, but this one was different. Black as coal. Black as death.
Black.
Black-black-black.
She watched as the steelwork swung about in the air above, like some perverse air-ballet, too fast for where it was headed. It looked unstable. She watched Skopchek, not all there at the controls of the crane. Felt the chaos swirling around within him and watched as he tried to do his job while his mind was consumed with hot confusion and emotion — not unlike her at this moment.
Lizzie watched Joe, the love of her life, take one of those moments to divert his thoughts to her, turning his back to the construction site. She watched as his face softened and he smiled, as he thought about her, about their upcoming vacation — about—
Psychic Page 18
