Undermind: Nine Stories

by Edward M Wolfe

  Shirley finished typing a message to her friends, letting them know she was in desperate need of three sawhorses and pleaded for assistance. She then minimized her web browser and picked up Bob’s mail and went to deliver it to him. When she reached Bob’s door, something told her she should knock loudly and rapidly and so she did, even though the thought was strange and made no sense. On the other side of the door, Bob was startled out of his sexual reverie by the sudden knocking. His hands jerked, hitting a key on his keyboard. He said “Come in,” but it came out froggy and unclear. He cleared his throat and said it again louder and more clearly.

  He had nothing on his screen to be embarrassed about, but his face was flushed and his mind was nowhere near where it should have been, so he peered intently at his screen trying to locate the cursor, not remembering where it had last been or what he had been typing. He found it blinking to the right of a dollar amount, followed by a decimal point. He quickly typed two zeroes to complete the amount and tabbed over to the space next to Pay Exactly. He looked over at the numerical dollar amount and quickly typed out the words for that amount.

  “I’ve got some mail for ya, Bob,” Shirley said and noticed that Bob’s face was red. “Are you feeling okay? Your face is red as a beet!”

  Bob loosened his tie and said, “I’m fine. Just fine. But it does seem a little hot in here. Is the A/C on?”

  “It’s on alright, but it’s hot enough outside to fry eggs. It’s only 92 but they said the “feels like” was gonna be over a hundred. You think it’s that global warming?” She set a small stack of envelopes on the corner of his desk.

  “92 seems about right for this time of year.” He glanced at her briefly, then returned his attention to his screen and continued typing to silently convey that he was too busy for talk about the weather.

  “Well, I’ll let you get back to work, Bob. Just wanted to bring you yer mail. You got anything going out today?”

  “I’ve got a few items in my Out basket, and if you don’t mind grabbing this one I’m sending to the printer right now, you can take it too.”

  Shirley walked over to the printer and took the check that had just come out. She waited a few seconds and an envelope followed. She would never understand how that worked with different things coming out and no need to change the paper or anything. She folded the check and slipped it in the envelope. As she sealed it, she wondered why things that came out of the printer were so warm. She grabbed the other envelopes from the Out basket on Bob’s desk and said, “I’ll get these out today, Bob. Don’t work too hard now!” and left his office, wondering if she might already have a sawhorse waiting for her.

  ***

  A week after Dr. Crandall put Lance into a coma, he brought him back out, confident that he was stable enough to face an emotional crisis without causing further damage to his heart. He gave Lance a few days to think while recovering before he brought up the options for dealing with his mangled leg.

  As Lance saw it, his choices were pretty simple: amputation, or chronic pain. Barring future medical developments or maybe some kind of stem cell miracle, he’d have very little use of his leg and he’d be in constant pain of varying degrees. The doctor’s opinion was that there was no point in keeping the leg if would never be of any use to him.

  Lance didn’t want to lose his leg. A psychologist might have said that he had experienced so much loss so suddenly that he couldn’t consciously choose to experience more. He had just lost his fiancé, his best friend, his business, and his car. He didn’t know how he was going to pay his mortgage so he was at risk of losing his house as well. All he had left was his life and his dog. If he lost his house, he might lose his Domino too. He cared little for his life. If it wasn’t for his dog, he’d just end it. But he loved Domino and the only pleasure he had left in life came from having him and knowing that at least he’d never be betrayed by him.

  A dog didn’t have it in his nature to make a promise and then go back on it later. Everything in Domino’s world was crystal clear with no shades of grey. No ambiguity or uncertainty. To Domino some things were good and some things were great. Some things were bad and some things were very bad. Lance was great. Mailmen were bad. Those were cold, hard facts to Domino and they would never change.

  Lance was finally discharged three weeks after he was brought out of his coma. Most of his pain had reduced to bearable levels as his body healed. His leg was the one exception. He hoped it would hurt less as time went on, even though the doctor said it probably wouldn’t. When he took enough medication to sufficiently dull the pain, his mind was pretty useless. His brain felt fuzzy and he couldn’t bring himself to really care about anything. He just wanted to sleep. What a life this will be,he thought. And I’m going to be a great companion to Domino. He started to cry at the thought of being worthless to his only remaining friend.

  When Lance had awakened from his coma, he had eventually thought to ask if his phone had been found in the wreckage. His phone was brought to him and a friendly nurse bought him a charger. Among the missed calls, voice mail and text messages, there was a text from Kim letting him know that unless he objected, she would take care of Domino until he came home, and that she would even make sure to not be there when he came back if he still didn’t want to see her.

  He appreciated that Domino would have someone he loved taking care of him while he was away, but he still wanted nothing to do with her. Lance knew that Kim was one of the great things in Domino’s life, but he was just going to have to get along without her after he came home.

  Lance wondered if Kim was doing anything about the bills that must be piling up. He supposed she could be signing his name on checks and mailing payments, but he barely cared one way or the other. He should have received the huge check from his last job by now, but Kim couldn’t deposit it.

  Finally, the doctor told Lance that he could leave and gave him some prescription bottles as he asked Lance if he knew someone who could pick him up. Lance asked if a cab could be called for him. A short while later, a nurse assisted him into a wheelchair and handed a pair of crutches to him to hold on to as he was wheeled out to the waiting taxi. Before the nurse came, he sent a text message to Kim: I’m coming home. Please don’t be there. Thank you for taking care of Dom.

  When the taxi pulled up in front of his house, Domino somehow knew that Lance was home. He barked, expressing his excitement and happiness and he pawed frantically at the door. When Lance opened it he had to hold on to the doorframe to keep his balance as Domino jumped up trying to reach Lance’s face with his tongue. For the first time since the wreck, Lance smiled. He ordered Domino to calm down and give him a minute to get inside. Domino didn’t even consider complying with the order.

  Lance was glad to have the distraction of Domino’s love and affection. His whole life was now changed for the worse and he resisted thinking about everything he had to do. The one thing that couldn’t wait though was paying his rent. He didn’t know what his checking account balance was, but he knew it had to be bad since he’d made no deposits since he’d been hospitalized. He sent a text message with the word “Bal” to his bank. A moment later his phone chimed with a reply text informing him of his balance, which was negative.

  He couldn’t really blame Kim for having overdrawn his account by sending checks he didn’t have the funds to cover. He made it clear to her that she was welcome to stay at his house since he needed someone to take care of Domino, but otherwise, he wanted nothing to do with her. No communication at all. So he hadn’t told her not to pay his bills.

  He remembered the check that should be in his pile of unopened mail and realized that being a few hundred in the hole didn’t even matter since he’d be making his biggest deposit ever – once he found a way to the bank. Not wanting to waste his small fortune on cab fare, he needed to call his insurance company about settling on his car, which he assumed was totaled since he himself was nearly totaled in the wreck. Filing an insurance claim was just one more thi
ng he didn’t have the energy or will to deal with yet, but he did need to deal with the bank. If he was going to go on living, he needed a house to live in, food, water, etc.

  He reached for the pile of mail that Kim had left on his coffee table and quickly leafed through the envelopes looking for the one from Ohio. He found it and opened it. When he saw the check he told himself the pain killers must be messing with his mind. The check was made out for $12.00. He looked at it more closely to see if he was misreading it and seeing a period where there was actually a comma, but it was also written out in plain English: Pay Exactly: Twelve Dollars.

  “I don’t believe this.” He leafed through the envelopes again; certain there had to be another one from the same sender. There wasn’t. He saw the company phone number on the check, grabbed his phone and dialed it. He chose Accounts Payable from the automated voice menu.

  “Bob Gorlecki,” he heard a voice say after just two rings.

  “Bob, this is Lance Beaumont of Beaumont Security Systems. I did a job at one of your stores recently in Tarzana, California and submitted an invoice for $12,000. I just got out of the hospital after a bad car wreck and found that you sent me a check for $12.00. I need the correct amount sent as soon as possible.”

  “If we made some type of mistake, we’ll be happy to correct it. I’ll just need you to send me a copy of the invoice and I’ll have our accounting department look into it. Do you need the address?”

  “Bob. There is no “if.” You sent me a check for twelve fucking dollars on a twelve thousand dollar job. I need the full payment, and I need it today.”

  “Sir, I’m just about to leave the office. I’m afraid nothing can be done today. But if you’ll send me documentation that confirms the work you did for us, the authorization for payment, and a copy of what you claim is an incorrect payment amount, I’m sure we can get this straightened out.”

  “Dammit, Bob. You’re not listening to me. I just got out of the hospital after being in a near fatal car wreck and I have no money in the bank. You have my security system in your store AND you have my money. It’s bad enough I had to wait for you to send a check through the fucking postal service, but now, considering how you just screwed me with a twelve dollar check, I want you, or someone with authorization, to rise up to the call of duty, if not above and beyond by sending me the balance you owe me TODAY, via wire transfer. Are you getting me, Bob? Am I making myself fucking clear, Bob?”

  “I’m sorry sir, but I refuse to be spoken to in this way, and as I believe I’ve made clear, we are closing the office and will be back on Monday. I’ve told you what is needed to resolve this issue and I won’t be verbally abused into doing anything other than our standard procedure. Good day, sir.”

  When Lance heard the beep signaling that the call had ended, he almost threw his phone through his television screen. He clenched his teeth in anger and took several deep breaths to calm himself before hitting the Call Back button on his phone’s display. The number rang several times and was finally picked up by a recording informing him of the company’s business hours and giving him an option to leave a message.

  He pressed the End button without leaving a message. He was seething with rage and his leg was now throbbing in greater pain than usual. He wanted to kill Bob and he imagined the building that Bob was in blowing up with a massive explosion and the subsequent formation of a mushroom cloud appearing over the rubble. Un-fucking-believable. This could take forever to get his money. How was he going to eat, or keep his utilities on, or do anything for that matter?

  “Damn you!” he screamed at Bob from over two thousand miles away. He wanted to smash something. He wanted to smash a lot of things. The anger inside him was increasing and it pulsed in tune with the throbbing pain in his leg. He hated the dull mind that came from his pain-killers but now he wanted to be oblivious. It was the only thing that would keep him from going crazy or exploding.

  Domino watched Lance take the pills. It was clear to him that something was very wrong and he wanted to comfort Lance but he was afraid to come close to him. He’d never seen Lance like this before and he wasn’t sure if he’d been bad. Maybe Lance was upset with him. That would explain why he was gone for so long. Domino didn’t know if he had done something wrong, but if he did, he was sorry. Feeling guilty, he lowered his ears and sneaked quick glances at Lance every now and then to see if he was still in trouble.

  ***

  A week after talking to Bob and sending the paperwork that the stupid jerk insisted on, Lance was sitting on the couch watching CNN Headline News with the sound muted. He read the scrolling news ticker at the bottom of the screen and sometimes played a game of trying to read the lips of the newscasters. He could rarely tell what they were saying though, and he didn’t care.

  Nothing much mattered to him anymore. During the last week, he had eaten all of the groceries Kim had left behind and then had to start in on things that had been in his cabinets forever and would probably never have been eaten otherwise.Why do we buy shit we have no intention of eating, he wondered. He had no appetite and only ate when he couldn’t take the hunger anymore after it had gotten to the point of making him dizzy and weak.

  He thought about his life and where he had started off and where he had ended up. When he was young, he expected nothing out of life and so any time something good did happen to him, he viewed it skeptically and with the thought that it wouldn’t last. Lance’s parents died in a car wreck when he was a baby. He survived, uninjured and was put up for adoption since he had no relatives who could or would take him in.

  He grew up feeling completely alone. He never bonded with any foster family and he hated the other boys in the group-home where he spent the last of his teenage years. He graduated from high school at the age of 17. He walked away from the school and never looked back. The state emancipated him since he only had the summer remaining before he turned 18 and there was no reason to spend any money keeping him fed and sheltered for three more months in the group home.

  He had no idea what to do with his life at first so he wandered from one meaningless job to another. He was very intelligent but never even thought of getting an education beyond high school. The years drifted by with Lance barely making a living until finally he found himself in yet another meaningless job when it occurred to him that he could run the business better than the owner could.

  He tried telling the owner his ideas, but was rudely dismissed as not having valid input. The owner had gone to college and had a degree in business administration. Lance had nothing but a high school education and therefore didn’t know what he was talking about. At first, Lance was angry at the owner’s ignorance and unwillingness to listen to him. If he had, he would’ve seen that Lance had some very valuable input – college degree or not.

  The angrier Lance got, the more determined he became to start his own business and put his ideas into practice. So he started saving money. He lived very cheaply, renting a bedroom in the basement of a house where his only possessions were his clothing, a TV and a video game console. He began delivering pizza at night to make even more money, all of which he kept under his mattress.

  After three years of saving, he registered a business name, bought supplies, rented a storage unit to keep them in and started advertising. Things started off painfully slow, but he always did the best work he could and it was extremely happy customers referring him to others that got his business rolling. Then it started to snowball. The more customers Lance got, the more referrals he got and it just kept going. He was eventually running his own business. And then with the contract he had landed just before his birthday, his company had become larger than the one he had left, and Lance was sure he’d be putting his former employer out of business before the year was up.

  Things couldn’t have gotten much better for him just before the wreck. He went from expecting nothing good out of life to having a lot to be happy about and much to be thankful for. And then he lost it all in one day.

>   Lance had grown up with no guidance, no mentor, no help of any kind from anyone. Everything he had accomplished had been on his own. People always said ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Lance thought, if you’re helping yourself, then how do you know God was even involved? Lance was the one with the ideas and the one who worked over-time on every project he could, and the one who worked a second job and saved money, etc. He didn’t see where God played any part at all.

  He had everything one day, and then nothing the next. What did that say about God? Did God also hurt those who helped themselves just to even things out a little? Lance concluded that the only intelligent answer was that there was no God because that made the most sense. God didn’t give him success and happiness and then take it all away. Not unless God was a raving lunatic who decided the fate of people by rolling dice.

  Lance made his business successful with determination, good ideas and a great work ethic. Random chance took everything away. If he had left his house just a few seconds sooner or later, he wouldn’t have been in that spot on the road when that brainless twit plowed into him. Random bloody chance. That’s all life was. Lance was committed to out-living Domino, and that was it. As soon as Domino died he would kill himself.

  In the meantime, he had to go through the motions of living, and that meant paying the bills, and cooking and cleaning. After he had come home from the hospital, he sub-contracted the big job he had landed to his former employer. Lance would get 20% of whatever profit the sub-contractor made.

  He looked at his coffee table and although it was littered with junk mail, bills and trash, he could still easily spot the electricity disconnection notice printed on blue paper with the words FINAL NOTICE in letters one inch tall. He needed to pay that by tomorrow. That meant he had to get up and see if he’d gotten the replacement check from Ohio yet or if his sub-contractor had sent him anything.

  Knowing that walking to the mailbox was going to increase his pain level, he took two painkillers even though he had already taken two less than an hour before. He leaned back on the couch and gave the pills some time to get into his bloodstream before motivating himself out of his lethargy so he could face the arduous task of getting up and walking to the front door.