The Little Black Box

by K. J. Gillenwater

  “I could get you a notepad.”

  “Or maybe I could just think about my day or something. Would that work?”

  “Maybe. Go for it.” Although Paula had niggling doubts about the AIM device, she had to admit she was curious.

  Paula shut the door firmly. Glancing down at her watch, she marked the time and headed back to the living room to finish cleaning up their mess.

  ***

  The door shut behind her. Lark turned on the box.

  The little red light blinked on. It made a peculiar clicking sound and then a soft, whirring purr.

  She stared at her reflection in the vanity mirror and touched the latest piercing on her right eyebrow—it didn’t look so great. Red and angry, it hurt when she touched it tentatively with her index finger. In a few days, it should be better, though.

  Right. She was supposed to be thinking about her day. Morning. What happened in the morning? Oh, right. She woke up to a voicemail from her stepfather—jerkwad—asking her if she was coming to some stupid anniversary barbecue for him and her mother. As if she would step foot back in that house!

  Then, later at work, a few regulars came in to continue work on their body art. That sorority chick who wanted “Alpha Upsilon Forever” on her ass. Really classy girl, that one, with her pearls and perfectly manicured nails. Lark would bet that Daddy had no idea his daughter was marking up her body with a tattoo she’d probably want lasered off in five years.

  Lark smiled to herself at the memory of inking the outline to the lettering. It was worth every zap of the needle to see Little Miss Pink and Perfect wince with large tears smearing her heavy mascara. She left the shop looking like Tammy Faye. Hilarious.

  And then there was weeper boy. The stud who hadn’t even made it through ten minutes of the tattoo needle.

  Wuss.

  The red light on the machine flashed.

  A sharp pain hit in the back of her head, like a series of pinpricks to her scalp. She cried out. The pain grew steadily stronger until it was like a knife’s edge sliding in and out of her head. Each second the sharpness increased tenfold. Wave upon wave of pain obliterated everything around her. She could barely think, barely move. She wanted it to end. Now.

  “Lark, is everything okay?” Paula’s voice was muffled behind the door.

  Lark couldn’t speak. The pain intensified. She groaned and slumped forward. She couldn’t hold up her head. Everything was about the pain.

  The little black box whirred and clicked, whirred and clicked.

  Chapter Eight

  “Lark?” Paula opened the door, her heart pounding. Something was not right.

  Lark was sprawled across the vanity. Paula’s stomach dropped.

  What was wrong?

  Paula shook her by the shoulder. “Are you all right? Can you hear me?” Her mind raced to find answers, a plan of action.

  The red light on top of the box flashed like a strobe light. Reflected in the vanity mirror, it gave an eerie glow to the room.

  “Help me. Oh, God, it hurts.” Lark pressed her fingers against her forehead.

  A slight rush of relief ran through Paula with the knowledge that her friend was conscious. “What hurts? Where?”

  “My head.”

  “Come on, you should lie down. Come over by the bed.” She coaxed Lark out of the chair and toward the bed. “Do you want me to get some aspirin?”

  “I can’t.” Lark stumbled.

  Paula helped her to the bed.

  With Lark in such pain, the distraction of the flashing red light drove Paula crazy. She grabbed the cord, ready to yank it from the wall. Before she could touch it, Lark let out a sigh.

  “It’s over.” Her body relaxed. “It stopped, the pain stopped.”

  The red light blinked out. For a few more seconds, the box whirred and clicked.

  “Are you sure?” Paula rushed to her side. Her friend was pale—too pale. “Should I take you to the E.R.?” She wasn’t convinced the incident was over.

  Lark sat up on the bed and breathed deeply, her eyes closed. “I’m okay. It was just this pain.” Her words drifted off, and she slowly opened her eyes. “I’m better now. Really. I’m fine. Me and emergency rooms? Not the best of friends.”

  Lark’s stepfather had sent her to the hospital more times than Paula cared to remember. Black eyes, broken bones, concussions. They probably had a special file drawer for her over at University Hospital.

  “What happened?”

  Lark shrugged her bony shoulders. “I was thinking about my day—like you told me—and then, boom; the pain hit me out of nowhere.” Paula could see even the memory of it was enough to make Lark wince.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” Paula looked her friend straight in the eye.

  Lark, her dark eyes rimmed with heavy black liner, stared back. “Yes. Fine.” She took a few deep breaths.

  Paula’s stomach knotted. Her friend wasn’t sharing everything with her. She could sense it.

  “I’m all right, okay?” Lark wiped away unshed tears, straightened her back, and returned to being Lark Michaels—the ninety-nine-pound tough girl, the one with the hard, outer shell. She gave Paula her widest, craziest smile. “So, how do we read this damn box anyway?”

  The black box sat on the vanity. Although Paula was wary of her friend’s condition, she knew her friend had lived through much worse. If Lark said she felt fine, there was no dissuading her from it. Guess it wouldn’t hurt to find out how the thing worked.

  Lark pulled out the memory stick. “Where’s your laptop? Let’s see what kind of aura I have.”

  ***

  They both stared at the screen of Paula’s laptop.

  “Click on it.” Lark pointed at the file that appeared on the desktop.

  Paula’s thumb glided over the track pad and guided the cursor arrow to the new file. She clicked. A text file opened with a jumble of numbers all over the page.

  “See, what did I tell you? I can’t read this file.” Oddly, relief filled Paula at the discovery. Deep down, she really didn’t want to see what someone’s aura looked like in data form, someone’s essence strained down to impersonal bits.

  Lark scooted her chair closer to Paula’s. “Couldn’t you save it as a spreadsheet?” She gently pushed Paula’s fingers off the track pad and guided the cursor to the ‘Save As’ function. “See, right here? We can rename the file.” She typed “LARK” in the entry field, selected a new file type, and clicked on ‘Save.’

  Paula sat back and let Lark take over. Her friend double-clicked on the new file. A spreadsheet appeared with data in neat, organized rows. Dates were at the top of the spreadsheet with numbers in columns.

  “Not so hard after all.” Lark gave a smug smile.

  Paula took in all the numbers. “But we don’t know what all this stuff means.”

  “Here’s today’s date.” Lark pointed at the far right-hand column.

  “Looks like there’s three days’ worth of data on here.” The first column was labeled Monday, and all the numbers beneath the header were low ones: 1.3, 2.2, 2.1, 1.2, 1.4, 2.3. Then Paula looked at today’s column. The numbers started out low, and then spiked up much higher from 1.3 to 8.7 and stayed high until the last number in the column, 2.1.

  “Is this me?” Lark pointed at the last column.

  “Looks like it.”

  “I wonder what it means?”

  “I don’t know.” Paula scanned the columns of data. Now that she had the information in front of her, she grew curious. How did the students in Data Processing extrapolate results out of the numbers? How did this data tell them whether or not a box was functioning properly? And what was it about Sam’s and Craig’s results that had Dr. Pritchard questioning their honesty?

  Looking at the numbers from earlier in the week, Sam had a very consistent pattern. If the box were malfunctioning, wouldn’t there be an anomaly sandwiched between the numbers? If there was something unusual in Sam’s results from last week, it certainly wa
sn’t showing up now.

  Except for Lark. When the AIM scanned her aura tonight, the results were quite different from Sam’s. Why did Lark get different numbers?

  Paula really wished she understood more how the AIM worked. Perhaps she could ask Will to explain it tomorrow.

  “This is getting boring.” Lark headed to the kitchen. “Do you want another beer?” She opened the refrigerator and stuck her head inside.

  Paula stared intently at the columns of numbers. “Sure.”

  “Shut it off. I’m over it.” Lark returned with two bottles of beer in each hand. “I want to hear more about what a jackass your brother’s being lately.”

  Paula looked up from her computer screen. Her friend had the world’s shortest attention span. “My brother’s not that big of a jackass.” She powered down her laptop. She could always look at the data more closely tomorrow at work—that is, if she didn’t end up with a hangover. She waved off the beer.

  Lark forced the bottle into Paula’s hand. “I don’t like drinking alone.” She flipped a dining room chair around backward and straddled it. “True Confessions—give me all the dirty details. Did he call you a heathen?”

  Paula gave her friend a piercing look. “Peter’s never called me a heathen. Where did you get that idea?”

  “Well, the guy’s a priest—”

  “A minister, a Lutheran minister. A priest can’t get married, remember?”

  “Whatever, you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah. Mostly he bugs me about my ‘lack of serious commitment’.” Paula took a drink.

  “Commitment to what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—my career, my life. It seems to change from week to week.” She couldn’t tell Lark about the real reason why she’d skipped Sunday dinner.

  “Has he still not gotten over the fact that you’re doing this paranormal studies thing? Wouldn’t God like us to explore the unexplained in this world?”

  “Let’s see.” Paula touched a finger to her lips. “Last time I went to his house, I spent two hours defending my career choice. Peter thinks I should be listening to ‘God’s Will.’ Did you know that apparently God doesn’t like the paranormal?”

  Lark laughed. “Oh, he didn’t say that, did he?”

  “Close enough. He had that look in his eye—” Paula gazed off into the distance and raised an eyebrow, mimicking her brother.

  “Like right before his sermons?” Lark giggled.

  “I almost thought he was going to start quoting scripture.”

  Lark sat thoughtfully for a moment. “Why does he think he gets to stick his nose in your life like that? It’s not as if he’s your dad.”

  Paula winced at the statement. No, he certainly wasn’t her dad. God, how she missed her father. Peter looked a lot like him, though, with the same crinkly-eyed smile, the ruddy cheeks and wispy black hair that went every which way. It hurt sometimes to look at her brother. So many memories she wanted to forget.

  Tonight, she only wanted to drink, enjoy the evening, and think about anything but her family. That took up too much of her emotional energy. “He’s not that bad.”

  Lark must have noticed Paula’s change of mood. “Since your brother seems to be off the table for discussion, why don’t you tell me about this freaky guy you talked to today.” She peeled the label off her beer bottle again.

  “Lottery boy?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  The two old friends drank beer, laughed, and stayed up way too late, swapping stories about the weirdest people they’d ever run across. Lark, being a tattoo artist, won that contest hands down.

  Paula was relaxed and jovial for the first time that week, and it felt good.

  ***

  Sam Gunderson was tired. The night had been a long, but celebratory. He blew off the psychology paper he was supposed to be working on and headed straight for Maguire’s Pub—the most popular spot for college debauchery within walking distance of campus. No one wanted the buzzkill of a DUI after a night of revelry, so a small crowd could be found at all hours walking to or from the hole-in-the-wall bar.

  Sam bought round after round of drinks for the packed place. He hardly knew most of the people who slapped him on the back and congratulated him on his big win, but it didn’t matter. Once he drank himself into oblivion, no strangers existed anymore. Everyone was his best friend.

  He’d never had so many girls hit on him. He knew why they were suddenly interested, but he didn’t care. With a dozen numbers added to his contacts list, his weekend would be booked with beautiful girls for weeks to come. Too bad that one blonde—was her name Sheila?—got sick all over the pool table, or he’d have had a good time tonight.

  Now, though, the pub was closing and most of his brand-new friends had vanished. In fact, he was the last one to leave. He handed the bartender his credit card to pay for the hundreds of dollars’ worth of alcohol he’d purchased. When he pulled out his wallet, the shiny glint of his winning lottery ticket caught his eye.

  He plucked it out and stared at it under the dim lights, waiting for the bartender to come back with his card and receipt. It was one of those poker cards. Scratch off five cards and hope for a good hand. Sam had scratched off a full house. A royal flush, and he would’ve been a millionaire. But a hundred grand wasn’t bad for a college kid living off grant money and student loans.

  Tomorrow he’d have to find the lottery office to cash in his ticket. There would be some taxes to pay, but most of it would be his. No more ramen noodles for dinner every night. No more driving his pathetically rusted Jeep everywhere. No more dorm living. He could afford an apartment now. And no need for roommates. He smiled to himself.

  The bartender handed him his card. Sam tucked it in his wallet but held onto the ticket. It felt good to have it in his hands, as if it were safer somehow.

  He swaggered out of the pub. The neon sign outside was already turned off for the night. Sam looked at his watch, but the light was too dim to read it. He thought it might be two o’clock, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Stumbling into the parking lot, he tripped over crumpled cans and empty plastic party cups. The tower of his dormitory stood a half-mile away. Orange streetlights ringed the edge of campus, right across the road. Sam shivered in his t-shirt and jeans, but he didn’t have far to go. He wished he were already back in his dorm room, the sheets pulled up over him. Who cared about his roommate’s horrible snoring? It was late, and he was drunk and tired. Bed never sounded so good to him.

  Sam reached the edge of the curb and stared at the lottery ticket. It would solve all his troubles, make his life easier, and perhaps help him have a more than adequate college experience.

  The cold, October wind blew right through Sam’s clothes. His foot caught on an uneven part of the sidewalk, and he lost his balance.

  His chin hit the pavement first. A burst of pain erupted. Blood gushed onto the street. Sam was dazed. His touched his face to find out what kind of damage had been done. His chin was shredded. Bits of flesh and gore covered his hand.

  Then, he realized something. His ticket. It was gone. His hand was empty.

  Fuck!

  He struggled to stand. Dizziness from the impact and pain came over him in waves. It looked as if two quarts of blood had gushed from his face.

  The ticket had to be there. It had to.

  He scanned the pavement, hoping for a glint of silver, but all he could see was a red smear where his face had hit the street. His body shuddered uncontrollably—either from the shock of the injury or from the fear of losing the one thing that would make his life halfway decent.

  He’d been freed of everything he hated about his life. How shitty his good fortune ended like this. No way. The ticket had to be here.

  He got down on his hands and knees and crawled around on the street. He searched the gutter, looked between parked cars. Nothing. It was nowhere. Sam sat back on his heels in disbelief.

  The change in position caused a shooting pain
to jolt through him. Blood dripped from his face. He probably needed to get stitches, but he didn’t want to leave that section of road. His ticket had to be nearby. And if he left—

  He didn’t want to think about someone else finding his ticket, cashing it in, living the life he was supposed to be living starting tomorrow. He grew ill thinking about it.

  His brain started to hurt—knife-sharp stabs of pain.

  Without that ticket, it was pointless to continue on the way he’d been living his life. The debts he owed. How was he going to pay his dorm bill for next month without his grant money?

  God, why couldn’t he find that ticket?

  A broken bottle lay in the gutter. The sharp edges glinted under the orange streetlight. His fingers itched to pick up a shard of glass, hold it against the pale of his wrist, and slice through the thin skin. End it. End the pain. End the worry. End the pointless existence he led.

  He bent down, ready to grab hold of the shard.

  A pickup truck rumbled down the street. Sam switched his focus from the broken bottle to the speeding truck. Closer and closer. Only ten feet away. Five feet.

  He leapt out in front of it.

  The truck smashed into him, tossing him across its hood and onto the sidewalk. A smear of blood delineated the path Sam took before he landed. His body lay at odd angles—an arm bent crazily behind his torso, both legs twisted and mangled, his head like a smashed pumpkin on Halloween.

  The truck skidded to a halt. Its engine purred in the early morning quiet. The driver rolled down his window, took one look at the unmoving lump and then pressed on the gas and sped down the street.

  Right next to Sam’s still corpse, in the gutter, sat a silver lottery ticket, its face spattered with blood.

  Chapter Nine

  Lord, did her head hurt.

  Paula dragged herself into work the next morning with a horrible hangover. It was criminal how bright and cheery the sun shone. Its rays burned her half-open eyes. Why couldn’t it be gray and cloudy, like her mood?

  She wanted to slip unnoticed into her office chair, drink about five cups of coffee, and type as quietly as possible the whole day.