“What the fuck was that!?!” escaped John's lips when he could speak again. There was a blinding pain in his eyes, and he felt groggy and slightly dizzy, but otherwise he felt fine. He stared dumbfounded at the small metal book for several minutes, daring the strange symbols on the pages/plates to do their trick again. He even flipped the book shut several times and reopened it, to see if the light show would repeat itself, but nothing happened. He did notice one thing though, and he wished he hadn't. The key hole was set into the top panel of the book, so when it sat open, it was on the top right side. When he put the key in, it went almost a full half inch before it stopped. Yet, the metal panel was only the thickness of a dime, like the pages, and the key never protruded through. It simply vanished into an impossibly tiny space within the panel. The sight of this, and the idea of it, brought something cold and liquid to John’s gut. He knew he was not only out of his league, but he questioned if he might be out of his mind. He was very clearly dealing with something he could never understand and should stay the hell away from. Yet, he put the colorful box and its contents in the small pile of family heirlooms, despite a deep desire to be rid of it.
That night, John slept on his father’s small couch; he couldn't bring himself to sleep in his father's bed and couldn't afford a hotel room. He fell asleep almost the instant he relaxed; normally it took him what felt like hours of staring at the ceiling before he drifted off. Normally this was not. His dreams were intense and vivid; they had a quality that was realer than reality about them. At first, they were a continuation of the lights and patterns from the metallic book, except that here and there in the dream they seemed to slip through time and break boundaries that John had no words to express. In his dream, he said to himself; “This is so much more than I can handle. It's so terrifying.” It was the truth: something about it sent a primal jolt of fear through him, and something more terrifying than the anger of Gods ever could be. He was so scared that the woman’s voice that answered his was a comfort, even though he did not know the speaker and could not see anyone or anything beyond the gyrating coalescing patterns . . . .
“These are moments you will never forget,” she said. “We have all experienced them, all trembled in terror at what they meant. Do not abandon hope. Have faith in your teacher; have faith in the skills you have learned. Never forget the first lesson.” He knew that what the woman said should make sense, that it should fit into some greater structure that he didn't have. John fought down his panic and tried to wake up, but couldn't. It was such a struggle that when he finally did wake up, he bolted upright and leaped across the small apartment. He was losing patience with this steady stream of 'what the fuck' moments and feared they would become his everyday life. I can tell you safely: his fears were about to be realized.
Chapter 4
Springtime in Saint Paul, Minnesota is a treacherous thing: Cold and bitter as the early days of winter, yet there are moments where you dare to hope for springtime and warm weather. John had not been back in years, and had not forgotten how cold it was, so he was happy his father had chosen to be cremated rather than buried. While there was no family left to show up, there were plenty of friends, coworkers, and neighbors who did. His father had always been an easy-going guy that people just seemed to want to talk to, and as a result, he had friends from every corner of his life show up to bid him farewell. John was happy to see so many people and more than a bit nervous that he knew so few of them. Every conversation seemed to start with either “You must be John . . .” Or “I'm very sorry . . .” It was starting to wear thin extremely quickly.
When the service got started, and everyone took a seat, it was only a momentary relief because it drew closer the moment when he would have to stand up and say something about his father. It wasn't that he lacked things to say or funny stories to tell; he just had never been good giving speeches. When the time came, he walked to the front and stumbled over a wrinkle in the carpet, almost falling. He joked that it was almost the last of the Carter family right there. People chuckled, and he felt a bit more at ease. He read the short eulogy with what he felt was a shaking voice; to him, it seemed a silly thing, a small thing, to try and sum up a life with. He walked to his seat and sat down while others got up and told stories; some he had heard, others he had not. As he listened, he caught sight of someone standing behind the flower arrangements. At first he thought it must have been an employee of the funeral home slipping from room to room discretely, but he was wrong.
Stepping out from behind the flower arrangements was an extremely tall, mostly naked, African tribesman. He wore nothing but cut off jeans that were faded, ripped, and stained, while carrying a thin spear with a menacing steel tip that glinted in the light. The Tribesman's hair was iron gray and hung nearly to his waist in thick dreadlocks; his beard was a bristling mass of whiskers obscuring his mouth. John was shocked, to say the least. If this was a joke, it was neither the time nor place for it. He looked around to see what the reactions were of the people around him and to his further surprise they were not looking at the tribesman. Every eye was locked on the older woman at the front of the room as she told a wandering yarn about the time John’s father helped her remove a live cat from the lint trap in her dryer. He looked back to the tribesman and watched him quietly sit next to the priest on a metal folding chair to one side.
You and I know, from the prologue, that only John could see the Tribesman. He didn't know that, though, and we have to give him some credit for figuring it out quickly and not doing anything dumb. He didn't ask anyone; “Hey, who's the guy with the spear that forgot his shirt?” This isn't about John, and how he ended up in locked psychiatric unit after all, it’s about . . . Well, it's not about that anyway. John, though, was pretty sure that he was going to end up in a locked room being force fed colorful pills and asked about his feelings in regards to alien mind control and electric shock treatment. As soon as things wrapped up with the funeral, John walked up to the chair the Tribesman had been occupying only seconds before, and started looking discretely for hidden doors. When he couldn't see any, he didn't dismiss that there might be one concealed somehow, but he was somehow certain that there was no door. He was also certain that the Tribesman was real and he wasn't crazy, but this left him with the uneasy question of why no one else seemed to see him. John knew better than to start asking people about it and did his best to muddle through the rest of the evening without hallucinating further.
Later that night, as John sat on the floor of his father’s now empty apartment; he toyed with the ring and contemplated the last couple of days. There was a deep sense of unreality about it. The suddenness of his father’s death was difficult enough and brought him to a wretched and lonely state on its own, but it also left him confused and looking for answers to the big questions of life. “What is the Meaning? Is there a purpose to all this?” And the most damning realization was that a man's life eventually added up to a few small boxes of keepsakes and a lot of trash bags in the alley. It made John look at his own short and unremarkable life in a harsh light. This was enough to make any grown man reconsider his choices, direction in life, and what it all meant. Throw in that book and the crazy letter that hinted at so much but said so little, then suddenly the floor did not seem so solid anymore. It was perfectly reasonable that he should be seeing strange things, as his mind cracked under the strain. Wasn't it? He told himself that he didn't feel crazy. Do crazy people know they are or is it the denial that makes them crazy?
He put the ring away and stretched out on the blankets he had laid out on the floor. John suddenly felt so terribly alone and tiny in the universe. In the morning, he would turn over the keys to the landlord and head back to Chicago. Was Chicago really his home now or was it just the place he was stuck and couldn't escape? He suddenly felt angry, and impotent. John had never considered suicide, never been one to give up (blindly marching on was another matter), but he suddenly understood how people could choose to escape. He wouldn't; he had ques
tions. If nothing else, he wanted to know what the hell that book was and where it came from.
Chapter 5
John was late, again. Standing on the L platform staring at the same faded and miserable “Chicago” style hot dog, again. It was raining though, John just wasn't impressed, and he didn't want to run in an effort to stay dry. He just stoically walked through the rain and trusted in his coat to keep him dry. The train rumbled up through the rain, and John found himself alone in the L car. He settled in to watch the world go by. He wanted the train to skip its stops, -for the driver to ignore yelling customers on the platforms and keep going. He wanted the world to lay down new track that ran off into some vast and unknown world. He wanted to escape but had no place to run to, and only himself to run from.
He clocked into work, not as late as he thought, but still remarkably late. To his surprise, Sandra was waiting for him at his cubicle; she was sitting in his chair, arms folded across her chest and a frown ruining her pretty face. When John stopped to take off his coat, she held her hand up and said only; “We need to talk.” She then got up and walked the short distance to her tiny office, without looking to see that John was following.
“I got promoted,” she said flatly, as soon as John shut the door.
“That's great news!” John had the sudden idea that this might mean he would get her old job, but this good news plainly conflicted with her mood. John looked for a chair that he knew wasn't there, so he stood and there was barely enough room for that.
“It is for me and not so much for you.” Sandra had always been blunt, but this was beyond her usual time is money attitude. “You know I've been covering for you a long time?”
“Covering for me?”
“The constant tardiness and . . . Other things.” She went from blunt to vague. What the hell?
“Other things? Have customers been complaining?”
“No.”
“Then . . .”
“John . . . You've been here a long time, so I know you and understand. Most of these other people don't. “
“Understand what?” John was suddenly extremely lost and starting to feel left out of the joke.
“That you're very lonely.”
“What does that have to do with my job?'
“You stare a lot. I've always thought it was kinda flattering the way you watched my ass.” John’s face suddenly felt hot. “But not everyone feels that way. You kinda creep a lot of people out.”
“Oh.” John suddenly wished he had something smart and witty to say, but he knew that only happened on sitcoms where there were teams of writers working in the lead’s favor. Unfortunately for John, he has only me as his narrator and I’m sticking to the truth.
“It's also serious when one of those people is the owner’s daughter working under her mother's maiden name. Do you see?” There was sympathy there in her voice, there always had been. John had just been mistaking it for affection and only now realized his mistake. “The tardiness is more than enough to get you fired, but staring down the wrong woman's blouse while she files . . . Every day. That is so much worse. I had to convince them to let me fire you. They wanted to make it an HR thing; I thought it would be best if we just did this between the two of us.”
“Oh.” John suddenly felt there was nothing to say, ever. This was not a sitcom after all, this was his life and he had just been called a creepy pervert by his very pretty boss. She had done it as nicely as she could, but still, she and others apparently were saying he was a creepy pervert of some kind.
“John . . .”
“Just give me a minute to clear out my desk.” He opened the door, walked to his cubicle and saw that there was only his coffee mug. He shuffled back to Sandra's office. “Fuck it, you can have the coffee mug. Can I just leave or do I need to be escorted out?”
“I'll walk you out.” Sandra looked ashamed and miserable but said nothing else and neither did John. At the door, he gave her his keys and ID. The receptionist had his check, and he filled out some HR paperwork on a clip board. The whole while, Sandra hovered around like she wanted to say something else but was having a hard time with it. When John finished and walked out the door, Sandra leaned out the door into the rain.
“John, I felt terrible saying this as your boss, but I can say it now. Barb was a total bitch from the start; you just never saw it. Trust me, you're better off without her,” She then vanished into the doorway before John could muster a response.
“Thanks and fuck you too,” he mumbled to the rain as he walked away.
At no point had it occurred to John that he should or could deny the charges that he could fight for his job and dignity. A lot can be said about that, and what it meant about his state of mind. Mental health professionals would sit up take note and say that it was behavior brought on by low self-esteem and depression. They would also say that John was a risk of further self-destructive behavior. They would not be far from the truth and had not John’s life already changed without him fully understanding it, we would be concerned for his well being. That is not to say he wasn't about to face some particularly hard times, just that suicide is not in the cards.
Chapter 6
He dreamed of patterns traced in the sand. Lines and curves filled with gold that shimmered in the sun. At the intersections were bright fire red rubies that called out and beckoned to points in the pattern far and distant from themselves. It was soothing and organized to look at, there was a meaning to it that was beyond him, but he felt empowered to seek it rather than shy away from it.
On Tuesday morning, John woke from his dreaming and fixed a luxurious breakfast of eggs, sausage, and toast. It was a lot more than John's usual English muffin or cold cereal, and it had a sedative effect on him. He had an urge to climb back into bed and spend the morning listening to the radio; he wanted the comforting imagery of the dream again. He resolved instead to take the day slow and hope that it worked for the best. So he showered and dressed for the day, trying not to think about anything, but as many of us know from experience, that never works. It is often an invitation to those small random thoughts that weave and thread back to the precise thoughts we are escaping. So, by the time John walked out his door, he was thinking about his father’s sudden absence from the world.
At the convenience store, John bought a candy bar and several newspapers: a couple of neighborhood papers and then the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times. The teenage kid at the register was the owner’s son; he didn't know any of the customers’ names, but he knew them all by face and tried to chat with them when he could. It wasn't much of a trip out, but it exhausted John, and he was happy to lock his door on the day well before noon.
With a ball point pen in hand, he scoured the papers while he listened to the radio. He was happy not to have a TV suddenly because he knew it would just distract him, but he was still mad at Barb for taking it (she had left the DVD player though). Not that the radio or TV would help him find a job, a task he knew was going to be difficult. He only had his high school degree and working at the call center for six years had been his longest running job. He found himself circling jobs that were more daydream than reality, just so that he could circle something. The few serious phone calls he made ended the same way every time: “Fax your resume to HR or apply on-line at the website.”
John skipped lunch unintentionally and at four o'clock found he was ravenously hungry. He wanted to go out or order pizza, but his wallet was thin and his bank account wasn't even going to make next month’s rent. So he settled on a frozen dinner. As he waited for it to cook, there was nothing to do and John suddenly found himself restless and angry at the world. Eating didn't help, mostly because the food tasted awful and he needed hot sauce on everything. After cleaning up, he leaned against the wall by the window and looked out over the city.
It was well past sunset and working on night time now. People were rushing through the cold to get home or to work, or wherever. All John saw was a rush of cars through the gaps in th
e buildings and the occasional L train racing past. Again, thoughts floated through his mind in a tangle that he didn't want and couldn't face. His father's death and how his life had been reduced to a few small boxes. Was this to be his fate? Who would order his life away into boxes and would it all end up in the alley as trash? He felt a wave of depression rising within that he felt powerless to escape.
As he steeled himself for his inner battle, he spied a large TV in a building about a block away. He watched it long enough to see that the owner was proudly watching some extremely nasty porn on it. How big was that TV that he could see it clearly from a block away? How much did it cost? And how pathetic was John that even this distant glimpse of carnal pleasure was enough to excite him?
Inherited Magic Page 2
