After a while, he reached for his crutches and by pushing downward on them he pulled himself up to a standing position. He got the crutches situated under his armpits and hobbled over to the front door, dragging his dead leg. He put his right crutch in his left hand and balanced himself so he could open the door. When he did so, he felt a blast of heat come off the glass of the storm door and winced. God, it was hot. If he didn’t have a check today, he and Domino were going to bake to death before starvation could kill them.
He opened the storm door and since the spring device that was supposed to make the door close automatically was broken, it drifted all the way open as Lance reached his hand around the doorway to withdraw his mail from the box attached to the exterior wall on his right.
Across the street, Devon descended into a hole next to a dead tree stump. A sleeping rabbit suddenly awoke. The first thing it noticed was that bright light was entering the warren from the entrance hole so it was much too early for him to be awake. But the rabbit felt wide awake and alert even though he knew the moon could not possibly be out there already. It was not safe to go out yet. But he felt unsettled and his heart was beating fast. Suddenly an image of a snake flashed into the rabbits mind. The rabbit responded without thinking. He bolted forward and then upward and shot through the hole. It was extremely bright outside and way too much light was in his eyes, but the image of the snake flashed again so he kept on running.
Domino was standing just behind Lance and a little to his left as Lance struggled to keep his balance while tearing his mail as he tried to extract envelopes that were too tightly crammed into the mailbox. Domino watched Lance, wishing he could help but there was nothing he could do. Then he detected rapid motion across the street. His ears stood up and his pupils expanded. He tilted his head so he could get a better view across the street because anything outside that moved could represent a threat to Lance or his property.
A rabbit! Domino was pleasantly surprised. He almost never saw rabbits. He took off like a lightning bolt, unaware that he had hit Lance’s crutch on his way out the door. He dug into the grass with his nails to better increase his speed as he ran across the lawn and then changed his running technique as he leaped over the curb and began running on asphalt when he landed.
The driver of the truck coming down the street had just barely seen a flash of fur flying in front of him and knew he had hit a dog before he even had time to hit his brake pedal. He pressed the pedal to the floor, locking up his back tires and screeching to a halt.
As Lance’s crutch was knocked forward by Domino, he fell on his back and the wind was knocked out of him. As he struggled to breathe, he heard a thump, a yelp, and skidding tires. Oh God, no! He immediately knew what had just happened. He heard a car door open and then shut. He heard doors and screen-doors open and close. He heard people gasping and talking suddenly. He heard a man say, “I never even saw him. I swear to God. He came out of nowhere!”
Lance was finally able to breathe. He lifted his head up and looked past his feet to the street outside. A small crowd was forming around Domino’s body which was lying in the street in an expanding puddle of blood.
This was the moment Devon had been waiting for. He released the rabbit and watched as the stupid dog continued to chase it even though he no longer had a body to chase with.
If Lance was going to turn, this was when it would happen. Devon drifted over to Lance’s doorway, watching him in both dimensions – physical and astral. It took the very last of his energy reserves to move fully into the physical realm but he decided to chance it. If Lance didn’t turn, it wouldn’t matter anymore anyway. There was no way he could possibly start on someone new. It would be the end for him if he failed. Now that he was completely in the physical world he saw everything as humans did, as if the dark cellophane had been removed and everything was bright and clear. He could still see the glowing colors from the astral plane and these are what he focused on now.
There were some strong dark yellows of fear and anxiety coming from the people on the street, but those were nothing compared to what Lance might generate. At first, Lance’s glow was dark brown with wide streaks of red and black but the brown started to deepen until it turned black and the red held on briefly, looking like lava trails from a volcano spreading out into the black and then those trails turned black also.
Devon smiled.
Lance felt something inside him die. Everything in his mind turned dark. A cold hate was forming. The tiniest shred of hope that things could ever be good again just went out like someone blowing out the tiny flame of a match in a big, dark room. Lance had nothing left to hold on to. No possible source of happiness, warmth or love for the rest of his life.
He embraced the cold darkness that he felt spreading from the center of his being out to his extremities. Devon felt the powerful infusion of new energy as Lance gave up his soul completely to darkness. Devon was ecstatic and reveled in the reward he had so diligently worked for.
Lance felt like he was reborn. He was free of mental anguish. His mind was crystal clear. The sadness was gone. No more anger. No pain from loss. No unhappiness of any kind. Just pure, beautiful hatred. It felt clear, clean and refreshing, like everything just clicked into place. He had nothing more to worry about. Not a care in the world. He couldn’t even imagine anything that could bother him now or take away this sense of satisfaction. He had nothing left to lose and now he was free.
He reached for the nine millimeter rifle that was leaning in the corner by the front door next to an umbrella. He thumbed off the safety and chambered a round. A shell flew off to his right and landed on the coffee table. He forgot that it had already been chambered. It had been a long time since he’d been to the shooting range. That was in another life.
Sitting up in his doorway, he brought the rifle up to his shoulder and looked through the iron sight. He aimed at the head of the man who was still gesturing wildly and proclaiming his innocence. “I never even saw him!” Lance slowly squeezed the trigger and the man toppled over to his left side and lay still in the street. The crowd of people around Domino screamed and scattered in different directions.
Lance chose the easiest target from among the running figures – the fat lady from down the street. She was running slower than the others and she would be the hardest to miss. He aimed at her back and fired. The bullet just grazed her arm. She didn’t even notice as she continued running across the street, then turned as she ran up onto the grass and headed for her house.
Lance aimed again more carefully this time, gently squeezed the trigger and the top half of her large body flew forward like she was diving for first base and she skidded along the grass. He fired another shot at the mass on the ground. She rolled halfway over and was still.
Lance laughed as he looked at the people running into their houses while others began coming out of theirs to see what was going on. “Fuck you all!” He laughed again like he was having the most fun he’d had in a long time. The man across the street where the rabbits lived opened his front door and stood in the doorway, looking around to determine why he heard women screaming and fireworks going off. Maybe someone had hurt themselves. A hole appeared in the door beside his head as he heard another firecracker explode.
He looked toward the source of the sound and saw Lance sitting in his doorway pointing a rifle at him. He didn’t understand. This didn’t make sense. Why would Lance… the thought was cut off as a bullet entered his face below his right eye and he crumpled to the ground.
Lance thought about calling a taxi so he could go to Tom’s house and introduce Tom and Kim to the new Lance. That sounded like a great idea. In fact, he could probably just honk the horn and get them to come outside. Then he could shoot them right through the window of the taxi without even having to strain a muscle getting out.
***
Marcel had been watching Lance and checking on him periodically since he’d gotten the alert from a Watcher that there had been an unnatural int
ervention in Lance’s life. As soon as Corrine’s car impacted with Lance’s, his fate was extrinsically worsened. This intervention caused a major deviation from the probability outcomes on Lance’s timeline and a Watcher detected the anomaly immediately after it happened. Such extreme alterations were almost always the result of a dark intervention.
The Watcher viewed the accident and the events that would likely follow as a result of it. Multiple lives would be unnaturally impacted in contradiction to all of their fate probabilities which called for an emergency counter-intervention. The dark ones knew that such actions would be countered, but all too often there were limited resources for a proper counter-intervention and so they got away with their interference. This Devon being was apparently counting on getting away with this. It would be a nice win for his side if he did. After viewing the grand finale that Devon had planned, the Watcher sent an alert to a light being named Marcel who began tracking Lance as much as he could when he could spare the time, which was not as much as he’d like since he had so many others to keep an eye on for counter-intervention.
Just this week Marcel had already lost a baby whose mother had put it in a microwave, a man who shot fourteen of his relatives at his daughter’s birthday party and twin girls who committed suicide together. Marcel and others like him were badly outnumbered and it was getting worse all the time.
Marcel had watched as Lance took two pain-killers and then dozed off on his couch while thinking about getting up to get the mail. Marcel perceived Devon nearby, anxiously waiting to finish his work with Lance. Marcel tapped into Lance’s subconscious and projected into his mind the outcome that Devon intended for Lance. Marcel used the strongest projection force he could muster, hoping that he was infusing his projection with enough charge to make an impact on Lance that this wasnot just a dream. This was a vision of his immediate future - unless he changed it.
Marcel thought of one additional thing that might help keep Lance on the side of light and he instantly relocated. He did a fast scan of the woman’s mind. He redirected as much energy as he could away from her guilt and fear and channeled it toward her hopes and desires, and then immediately projected a thought that he prayed she would act on.
***
Lance positioned the rifle so that the butt of it was on his porch and the barrel was pointing at the porch roof. He used the rifle as a crutch to get into a standing position. He needed to reload and get his phone off the couch to call a taxi. As he walked toward his phone, he continued to use the rifle as a crutch for the time being. He was too hot and tired to pick up his crutches. He saw his phone sitting on the couch, and when he looked at it, it began ringing.
The ringing phone pulled Lance out of his brief, drug-induced slumber. He woke up and opened his eyes and felt a wave of dizziness pass through his head and so he closed them. When he opened them again, he knew he was sitting on the couch and Domino was lying on the floor where he’d been for the last hour or so. His phone stopped ringing. Lance was completely disoriented. He didn’t know how he had gotten to the couch or how it was possible that Domino was inside, and alive. He looked out his living room window and saw his neighbor across the street watering his lawn.
He looked to his left. There were his crutches, leaning against the couch, right where he had left them when he came into the living room and turned the TV on. His rifle was in the corner leaning against the wall next to his umbrella where it had been gathering dust for months.
“Oh, my God! That was the most intensely insane dream I ever had in my life.” But it hadn’t felt like a dream. It was far too detailed. The sulfur and nitrates from the gunpowder had burned his nose. His shoulder had ached from the recoil of each shot he had fired.
As much as he hated the direction his life had taken, he did not want it to ever become as bad as that dream. Chills ran down his entire body as he recalled the total blackness he had felt in his heart. He had liked it in his dream, but now he was repulsed by it. No love was possible with a feeling like inside him. He looked at Domino and let his heart swell with the love he felt for him. Then he thought of Kim and the feeling intensified. This is how he wanted to be. He wanted to love and be loved. It was all the reason he needed to keep on living and thinking positive, no matter what.
He remembered that he was going to get up and check the mail. If what he had just experienced was just a dream, then he still needed to get the mail and see if a check had arrived. The feeling he had that this dream was much more than a dream made him that he better take precautions – just in case. He was not going to lose Domino to some freak accident.
“Domino. Walk?”
Dominio quickly got up and ran to the coat pegs where his leash was hanging. He grabbed the end of his leash with his teeth and pulled it down from the peg it was draped over and brought it to Lance, dropping it at his feet. Domino wagged his tail furiously. He wasn’t in trouble, and he was going on a walk! He was so excited and wiggling so much it was difficult for Lance to connect the leash to his collar.
“Still!” Lance ordered, and with great effort, Domino complied. When Domino heard the click of the catch being released after Lance had finally gotten it in place, he ran toward the door only to be yanked by his neck to a sudden stop. He tried to move forward and couldn’t. He looked back to see why Lance was holding him back. But Lance wasn’t even holding the leash. He had looped it through its own handle after wrapping it around the heavy oak leg of the coffee table. Domino tried to lunge forward but the table was too heavy. He couldn’t drag it. He did not understand how he was going to be able to go on a walk. There must be some mistake. He was stuck.
“Just a minute, puppy. Wait!”
Lance hobbled over to the door. He opened it and felt the summer heat emanating off the glass of the storm door. He leaned on his left crutch and held the right crutch with his left hand while reaching around the door jamb for the mailbox with the other. He grabbed the mail sticking out of the top of the mailbox. As he pulled out the mail that was crammed into the mailbox, he heard paper tearing and he froze. He looked across the street and saw a rabbit come running up out of a hole in the base of a dead tree. The rabbit ran like crazy in a zig-zag, self-defense pattern that was meant to make it harder for hawks and snakes to catch it. Domino saw the rabbit and he barked with excitement but could not move.
Lance felt chills run down his spine and the hair on his arms stood up. He brought the hand that was holding the mail back inside and shut the door. He was breathing hard as if he had just barely survived a deadly encounter, like when a car crosses the center line on the highway and you swerve out of the way just in time to avoid a head-on collision, saving your own life when you hadn’t even realized it was in danger. He looked at Domino who was looking up at him, wagging his tail and questioning him with his eyes.
“Just hold on, Dom.” Domino barked once in a high pitch. “Wait,” Lance ordered.
Domino sat and held a perfect sitting pose with his ears straight up, alert. He was used to waiting. He didn’t like it, but sometimes Lance needed to put on shoes before a walk, or he would pee in a large bowl of water in the bathing room. The waiting before a walk was usually not very long.
Lance positioned his crutches under his armpits and made his way to the couch. He swiveled around and sat, leaning the crutches against the seat cushion. He took a deep breath to calm himself and remembered that he needed to see if there was a check in the bundle of mail he had brought in. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that something momentous had just happened, even though he had done nothing more mundane than retrieve his mail.
He flipped through the envelopes and although he didn’t see the one he wanted from Ohio, he did have one from his sub-contractor. He opened it and unfolded the check that was inside. $2,025. That was his cut of a new store’s surveillance installation. As long as the sub did a good job and the company kept outfitting their stores as they’d agreed to, things wouldn’t be as bad as he thought they might be. The sub could easily
do one store a week, maybe a little less as the stores got further away, but Lance couldn’t complain about making two grand a week for sitting on his ass in a drugged stupor. It wasn’t going to be anywhere near as nice as twelve thousand a week would have been, but under the circumstances, he wasn’t going to complain.
Lance’s phone vibrated on the coffee table. He looked at it and saw the display reading “1 New Voicemail.” He had forgotten that it was the phone that had woken him up from crazy violent dream that still had him feeling rattled inside. He picked it up and pressed a few buttons, then hit the speaker button and set the phone back down. His hands were still shaking from whatever hadn’t just happened to him.
“Please don’t hang up,” the voice began. Domino’s ears perked up and he turned his head toward the phone. “I know you told me you never want to talk to me again, but please just listen to this one message. You owe me that much for taking care of Domino. What I did was terrible and I can’t tell you how sorry I am. But one thing you have to know, even if you never talk to me again - it was just that one night and we were both drunk and stupid. It never happened again. I swear.
“Tom and I have barely talked since we saw you in the hospital. I think seeing each other reminds us too much of how shitty we were for doing what we did. I tried to talk to Tom about it, but he won’t really say anything. I know he loves you, but I don’t know if he’ll admit how wrong he was. I will though. I was wrong, Lance. Totally wrong. And I’m more sorry than you’ll ever know. And if you’ll… um… if you’ll just talk to me…”
Kim’s voice caught and there was a few seconds of silence. Lance could hear it in her breathing; she was trying hard not to cry. He was surprised that he felt so sorry for her and he yearned to comfort her. Where was that coming from?
Undermind: Nine Stories Page 20
