Second Chances

by P. D. Cacek

  Eva felt her husband take her hand and squeeze it.

  “It’s not your fault, Mrs. Steinar. Your son was strangling and you acted the way any mother would.” The doctor looked down at the clipboard in her hand. “Is your son taking any medication?”

  “Thorazine,” her husband said before she had a chance to answer. “He was diagnosed with schizophrenia a few years ago.”

  “Thorazine?” the doctor repeated.

  “I don’t remember the dosage, Eva, do you? Eva puts it in his food. Curtis doesn’t like taking pills.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Steinar, there was no evidence of Thorazine in your son’s system, but we did find acetylsalicylic…aspirin residue when we pumped his stomach, which caused acute hemorrhagic gastritis….” The doctor took a breath. “Curtis was probably already bleeding internally, the fall only exacerbated it. We need to operate immediately to stop it.”

  Her husband released her hand to take the clipboard the doctor held out to them. Then signed the form and handed it back.

  “Will he be all right?”

  “We’ll do everything we can. Is your son on an aspirin regimen?”

  He handed it back. “Not that I know of.”

  “It was an accident,” Eva said, but no one was listening.

  * * *

  Arvada, Colorado

  Jessie leaned back against the wall, smiling and handing out the agenda for the weekly Wednesday night meeting. Although most of the congregation had joined, there were still a few who hadn’t seen the light, or the ever-increasing danger, and turned their backs on both the church and the U.C.U.A.

  It was her job, besides smiling and handing out schedules, to stand watch in case one of the Imp lovers decided to show up and disrupt the meeting. Not that it had ever happened to them, but during the Christmas meeting her father had shown a video of a man who’d walked into a U.C.U.A. meeting in Bristol, England, carrying a toddler he said was his wife. The baby couldn’t have been more than two, but when she opened her mouth….

  Jessie shivered at the memory of the woman’s voice coming out of the baby’s mouth.

  But that wasn’t going to happen here, not in her father’s church, not while she was on watch. Jessie remembered the night her father first told the congregation about U.C.U.A. and why he had decided to join them in their crusade. They were True Borns, he’d told them, men and women whose souls had been placed within their bodies by the one true God and not by some demonic accident. He told them that the U.C.U.A. was fighting for them against the growing tide of laws and support created solely to safeguard the rights of creatures that should never have been allowed to exist in the first place.

  It was only when her father had asked them all, as one, to stand and come forward and sign their names to the U.C.U.A. register that a few members stood up and left.

  But Jessie remembered who they were and none of them were going to get in if she had anything to do with it.

  Jessie.

  She turned toward the front of the church and saw her sister draping the U.C.U.A. altar cloth, white lettering on royal purple with gold trim, over the lectern. For some reason Paul Lister was helping even though her sister had never needed help before.

  Wazzup, buttercup?

  Abbie laughed at something Paul said and didn’t so much as glance in Jessie’s direction.

  Paul just asked me to Winter Fest!

  Woo and hoo.

  That got her a quick, and dirty, look. You could be happy for me.

  I’m thrilled beyond words. To prove it Jessie yawned.

  Sigh.

  “Good evening, Jessica.”

  Jessie turned and smiled. “Good evening, Mrs. Thompson. One Body, One Soul.”

  “One Body, One Soul,” their old babysitter answered. “Oh, now who is that young man with our Abigail? Is that little Pauly Lister?”

  Jessie turned as if she hadn’t noticed. “I think it might be.”

  “They make such a cute couple, don’t they? Do you have a young man, Jessica?”

  “Not yet,” she said, handing the old woman a schedule. “I think there are still a few seats up front, Mrs. Thompson.”

  “Well, don’t worry, dear,” Mrs. Thompson said as she toddled away, “I’m sure you’ll find someone.”

  Jessie kept smiling.

  “Hey, Jessie!” Carly was suddenly next to her, snaking an arm around her waist. “Do you see who’s with your sister? I didn’t know they were dating.”

  “I’m not sure he knows either,” Jessie said, and was about to suggest that they both wear U.C.U.A.-purple dresses with white rose corsages to the Winter Fest when her father waved her over. “Gotta go. Be right back. Do you mind handing out the rest of these?”

  Jessie handed Carly the stack of paper.

  “Sure. Okay, let’s meet for cocoa and donuts downstairs after the meeting. And find out if they’re going to the dance together.”

  Jessie gave her a thumbs-up and saw the bemused look on her father’s face as she hurried up to him. Abbie and Paul were still ‘straightening’ the cloth on the lectern.

  “I know it’s her turn this week,” he said, “but Abigail looks a bit busy, so would you mind calling roll tonight?”

  “Sure!”

  Jessie took the thick purple-and-white book from him and carried it proudly to the lectern. The joy and honor she normally felt was doubled by the look her sister gave her.

  It’s my turn!

  You’re busy. Dad said so. Go sit down with Pauly.

  His name’s Paul. “Good meeting, sister,” Abbie said out loud as Jessie took her place at the lectern. Try not to mumble like you usually do. “Come on, Paul, you can walk me to my place.”

  Jessie waited until both of them were seated, Abbie in the first pew, Paul in the third with his family, before smoothing a wrinkle on the altar cloth. Abbie glared then humbly joined the congregation in lowering their heads as their father raised his arms in benediction. Jessie dropped her chin and closed her eyes.

  “Welcome, my friends, and may the Lord bless you as you are now, in one body with the one and only soul he gave you upon birth, and may he keep you thus for all the days of your life here and for your life eternal. Unum corpus, una anima. One body, one soul forever. Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  Jessie’s Amen came just a fraction of a second after the others because she wanted to make sure their father heard her. Abbie might have been asked to Winter Fest and even have a boyfriend, but she would never be as committed to U.C.U.A. as Jessie and their father knew it.

  He’d even talked about the possibility of Jessie attending U.C.U.A.’s seminary program in Oslo when she graduated. “Your mother would be so proud of you, Jessica.”

  “And now my daughter will call the roll. If you will, Jessica?”

  Jessie opened the book and placed her finger by the first name.

  “Ellen Appleyard.”

  “Present.”

  “Trey Appleyard.”

  “Here.”

  Calling the roll was one of the U.C.U.A.’s most important tenets. A person’s name defined who they were as much as their soul did, and it was essential that the organization keep scrupulous records for posterity.

  “Riley Tabor.”

  Jessie counted to five as heads began to turn in the pews before her. “Riley Tabor?”

  Taking the pen from its special pocket on the inside of the cover, Jessie made a small X next to the name and looked at her father. It was the second X by the name. Her father nodded.

  “Richard Wingate.”

  “Here.”

  “Laura Wingate.”

  “Here.”

  “Carlene Wingate.”

  It was hard keeping a straight face when Carly wrinkled her nose, but Jessie managed. Carly hated her given name.

>   “Present.”

  Jessie closed the book, left the lectern and walked to her place in the first pew.

  I get to call roll the next two weeks, Abbie thought at her when she sat down.

  Only if you’re not busy….

  “Please stand,” their father said, “for the declaration.”

  Jessie took her sister’s hand and closed her eyes, reciting the words of the U.C.U.A. creed the same way she once recited the Lord’s Prayer.

  “I am as the Lord God made me. I am this body he created for me and imbued with the one soul that he alone fashioned. I am myself, born into the body I wear and animated with my soul that was placed in it by God’s hand. I was born whole and complete in mind, body and spirit. I am one with my soul and my soul is mine alone. I am one with my body and my body is mine alone. My body and soul are united by the Lord’s handiwork and no other has sway over them. My body and soul are mine and so it will be unto the end of time. ‘For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body.’ Unum corpus, una anima. One body, one soul forever. Amen.”

  Jessie let go of her sister’s hand as she opened her eyes. “Amen.”

  “You may be seated,” their father said and waited until everyone had settled down before taking his tablet from his suit coat pocket. “It has only been a week since our last meeting, but according to the U.C.U.A. update I received just this afternoon there are now two hundred and fourteen more documented cases of newly arrived imposters recorded in Colorado, thirty-six in the Denver metro area alone.”

  Groans and gasps competed with the whispers that seemed to grow louder as Jessie sat in silence, feeling sick to her stomach. The thought of someone else living in her body always made her want to throw up. Or scream.

  “Two hundred and fourteen documented, recognized, acknowledged and accepted cases. But have you ever wondered who is accepting these imposters, these abominations unto the Lord? Well, I’ll tell you. Those in power accept them, the elected officials of the world’s governments, men and women who should know better are the ones who accept them. But not only do they accept these so-called Travelers –”

  Her father had said the word the same way he would any profanity, as if it left a coating of filth on his tongue. Jessie swallowed.

  “– but help them find a place in this world, in our world, by teaching them, training them, showing them how to blend in, how to disappear so no one…no one can tell them apart from anyone else. The governments of this world are making it easy for the Imps to pass themselves off as True Borns!”

  Without warning, their father slapped the top of the lectern with the flat of his hand, skewing the cloth Abbie and her new boyfriend had taken way too long to drape and making everyone, Jessie included, jump.

  “And it has to stop! You know that and I know that, but how can we, as individuals, hope to fight against a government that will not see the truth when it is right in front of them?” He smiled and Jessie leaned forward. “By the simplest and most honorable method possible, we exercise our right to vote. Now, in a fair and just world, which obviously this isn’t –”

  Jessie joined in the laughter.

  “– this would be an election year and we could start at the top, but there isn’t even a special election coming up. However, there is a woman, a well-known and respected lawyer who not only believes in our cause but who has made it her personal goal to challenge each and every one of these so-called ‘Travelers’ Rights’ laws that have been passed.”

  Jessie sat up straighter. If she was right, Jessie knew exactly who her father was talking about. The three of them had gone to Washington, D.C., for the National U.C.U.A. True Born Convention the summer before and while they were there had watched a tall gray-haired woman in glasses captivate the audience in the convention center’s main assembly hall.

  It didn’t hurt that she was a Colorado native or that the commercials for her law firm reflected her principles.

  “Are you working in a mandated T-inclusive environment? Are you forced to work with individuals known as Travelers? Do you think you’ve been terminated so a Traveler could take your job? Do you feel discriminated against because you are True Born? Do you feel that no one cares? Well, I care. I’m Celeste Luthe and I will fight for you and your rights as a True Born. One body. One soul. One law. Our law. God’s law. It’s time we took it back.”

  Their father’s smile grew as the whispering began.

  “That’s right, I’m talking about our very own Celeste Luthe. As you all know she has been spending her considerable legislative talents and experience resisting the ever-growing crop of new laws supporting these abominations. She’s particularly focused on the recent bill that would give them voting rights, something that must be stopped at all costs.”

  He paused and Jessie leaned forward again, knowing something big was coming. “And, I have it on good authority, she will also be announcing her formation of a campaign team and her candidacy for the office of President of the United States of America in 2024!”

  Jessie was among the first on her feet, applauding and whup-whupping, much to her sister’s embarrassment. Their father laughed and let it go on for a few minutes before motioning everyone to take their seats.

  “Well, I’m sure she heard that in Cherry Creek, but hang on, it gets better. Ms. Luthe has personally invited every Colorado U.C.U.A. chapter to attend the rally that will begin –” He paused, building suspense. Jessie grabbed for her sister’s hand at the same moment Abbie grabbed for hers. “– at the site of the soon-to-be opened Travelers Center at the University of Colorado campus in Boulder.”

  No one was whispering now.

  “Leave it to the Boulder bleeding-heart liberals.”

  “What else can you expect from Berkley East?”

  “Just what a nuclear-free zone needs, right?”

  Jessie watched her father watching those gathered before him.

  Think Dad would make a good vice-president?

  Abbie looked at her. You really want to live in Washington, D.C.?

  “Dearest friends.” Their father hadn’t raised his voice, but the church went quiet again. “It’s not the town, it’s not even the people, it’s the fact that we have been invaded and the governments of the world don’t know how to deal with these imposters…the Imps who walk among us concealed in flesh that is not their own. The governments of the world don’t know what to do with them, but Celeste Luthe does and she will tell the voters of Colorado this coming Saturday. And to make sure those watching from home know exactly who we are, I’ve ordered two U.C.U.A. banners for the side of the church bus!”

  He had to wait until the cheering died down.

  “But I think we still may need to carpool, so if anyone with an SUV or similarly large vehicle will come see me after the meeting, we can get things started. One more thing, Ms. Luthe has asked that everyone wear U.C.U.A. certified apparel, so if you’d like to purchase a bright new sweater or scarf or baseball cap for the news cameras, my daughters, Jessica and Abigail, will be in the church store and more than happy to take your money.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “All rise,” their father said, and led the congregation in the unofficial U.C.U.A. hymn, ‘How Great Thou Art’, with special emphasis on the words “then sings my soul.”

  “Go in peace and in the knowledge that you are True Born and beloved of the Creator who made you,” their father said when the song ended. “One body. One soul.”

  “One body. One soul.”

  Amen.

  Chapter Six

  Nederland, Colorado

  Jessie wrapped her gloved hands tighter around the Styrofoam cup, hoping to leech out every last molecule of warmth from the rapidly cooling hot chocolate. It was working about as well as the folded blanket between her fleece-lined jeans and the bench was keeping her butt warm.

  It got really
cold at 8,200 feet. After the rally/demonstration, the whole congregation had come up to the Barker Meadow reservoir in Nederland for an impromptu ice skating party to celebrate.

  If she had any sense, she’d walk up the hill to the burn barrel most of the adults and a few of her brighter peers had gathered around or, like her sister and Paul, wrap up in a blanket and find a car to sit in. Barf. But it was obvious the only sense she still had that wasn’t frozen was her sight, and for the moment that was enough because it gave Jessie a chance to stare at Carly without being creepy about it.

  Dancing across the ice to the music from the portable speaker her dad had hooked up to his iPhone, Carly spun and jumped and did little cha-cha-cha moves that sent shivers up Jessie’s already frozen spine. The music was something country-western (puke), but it was a distraction Jessie could easily ignore as she watched Carly move across the ice, an insubstantial being, an angel darting in and out of the beams of light from the car’s headlights.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  Jessie took a sip of the lukewarm cocoa as her father sat down next to her, glad she’d chosen one of the picnic benches off to the side, away from the cars and their headlights. It was too dark for either of them to see each other’s faces, but the cold Colorado starlight was just enough for Jessie to see the A VOTE FOR LUTHE/IS A VOTE FOR US campaign button on the front of her father’s down jacket.

  Every U.C.U.A. member was given one. Jessie put hers on the front of her sweatshirt just above her heart. It sucked that she couldn’t vote, but she’d do everything else to help get Celeste Luthe elected.

  It was important that True Borns took back their place in the world.

  Carly thought so too. After the rally, they’d shared a seat on the bus – Abbie had gotten a ride with Paul and his parents – and talked about volunteering and getting the word out.

  It was the best twenty-five-minute road trip Jessie’d ever been on.

  “I’m fine.”

  He made a fatherly sound. “Sure you are. I’ve only been sitting here for a few minutes and I’ve lost all feeling below the waist.”