by Martha Carr
The Peabrain’s Idea
A Short Story
Martha Carr
MRC Publishing
Contents
The Peabrain’s Idea
Dedication
Want more?
The Peabrain’s Idea
Martha’s Notes
The Peabrain’s Idea
A Short Story of Urban Magic
Martha Carr
MRC
Central Texas
Copyright ©2017 by Martha Carr
Published by Martha Carr
Texas
All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.
The Peabrain’s Idea: A Short Story by Martha Carr is a novel and a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, dialogue, locations and plot are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Victoria Cooper
Created with Vellum
Dedication
To all those who love to read and are looking for a little magic inside of their lives.
Dedicated to all of the wonderful artists and authors who have helped me on this journey such as:
To Michael Bingham-Hawk for a great website and
so much more.
To Michael Anderle for his generosity to all of
his fellow authors.
To Abby-Lynn Knorr who graciously read the first drafts and provided valuable insights.
And to my amazing son, Louie and the wonderful Katie who are always so supportive.
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The email list will be a way to share upcoming news and let you know about giveaways and other fun stuff. I can let you know when the first full-length Peabrain book comes out! The Facebook group is a great way for us to connect faster – in other words, a chat, plus a way to find out about other series, extra short stories and more. And, from time to time I’ll share other great indie authors’ upcoming thrillers. Signing up for the email list is an easy way to ensure you receive all of the big news and make sure you don’t miss any major releases or updates.
I hope you enjoy the book!
Martha Carr 2017
The Peabrain’s Idea
The Volkswagen Beetle slid over the thick layer of ice and snow into the intersection like a large, heavy orange sled. Directly in its path was a short, thin man dressed in layers of worn clothes that all seemed to be too big for him. He was halfway across the street and only feet from the front bumper of the car. Too far to dart out of the way.
The driver’s eyes grew wider as he leaned on the horn, trying to warn the little man. All of the rushing commuters hurrying down the sidewalks turned their heads to look, horrified, waiting for the inevitable.
The man’s head snapped around and he raised an arm, more irritated than concerned, as a long stream of iridescent bubbles came shooting out from somewhere deep inside the droopy sleeve. The car gently came to a halt just inches away from the man’s ankles, kicking up a little snow onto his oversized boots.
He frowned and gave off a loud, “Ack! Peabrains!”
The bubbles continued to swirl, faster and faster, making a great cloud overhead, rising higher, gaining all of the attention of the looky-loos who had been poised to see a man’s bones crushed under a car.
Instead, now they looked mesmerized, fascinated even as the bubbles stopped rising, held where they were for a moment and then spread apart, floating out toward the different clots of people.
“Pop! Pop! Pop!” The bubbles landed around their heads, absorbing the last few moments of memory, giving everyone a moment of wondering why they were standing still on Montrose Avenue in a neighborhood of Chicago.
“Hmph,” said a young man in a long, wool overcoat, trying to remember that last thought. He shrugged and started walking, getting easily lost in his thoughts again about the day ahead.
Not all of the bubbles found their mark. There was a small stream gathering up by the nearby trees, hovering in the bare branches, waiting for something.
“Get down from there,” hissed the little man, as he stepped up onto the far curb. The bubbles were vibrating as a group, shimmering in the little bit of sunlight that was coming through the clouds. “Now!” he said, a little louder. A woman walking by gave him a look before quickly turning her head.
“Peabrain,” he hissed.
“Crazy!” she turned and said back to him. He grimaced long enough to get her to turn back around and keep going on her way.
The little man held out the same arm that had released the bubbles and shook it hard a couple of times for emphasis. “Now!” he said, just a little more quietly.
The bubbles shimmered, picking up their vibration, shaking the branches of the tree. A small shower of dead leaves shook loose, falling to the snow on the ground.
The man let out a sigh and whispered something under his breath. “Ich may, abruptunata.”
The tree took on different colors as the bubbles settled into the branches, creating a rainbow that reflected off the dull, brown bark. A sound like someone hitting a xylophone with a small hammer erupted from around the tree as the bubbles each gave off a musical note, gradually harmonizing.
“That has always worked,” said the little man, frowning. He looked around at all of the passerby. There was only another thirty seconds at best, till they would notice everything around them again.
“Peabrain!,” he said, shaking his fist in their general direction. They were eating up his morning. As he shook his fist, the bubbles shook as well, shaking the tree harder, until they rained down, bouncing along the ground, skittering closer and closer to a woman coming out of a nearby apartment building.
“What are you doing?” yelled the little man, clamping his hands down on the top of his head in exasperation. This was something new. The bubbles seemed to have a will of their own.
They were looking for Maggie.
Maggie Potter was lost in thought, as usual, as she pushed open the big iron gate in front of her building.
There was a short window between January and March that was Maggie Potter’s least favorite time of year in Chicago. It had nothing to do with the frigid air that a lot of people referred to as arctic.
She let the gate shut with a loud ‘clang’ as she stepped over the growing pile of soggy newspapers, half frozen to the ground. The bubbles were right at her heels, only inches away, making the little man wheeze with frustration that they would be seen, and worse, remembered.
They made a beautiful, shimmering line of color, just behind each foot, trailing as if they were being pulled along.
“Huh?” said Maggie but just as she was about to turn, a dog ran over and sniffed at the hem of her coat. She reached down to pet his head and he growled, letting out a loud bark, startling her.
“Oh,” she said, pulling her hand back.
The bubbles reacted, vibrating in an upward spiral, moving higher with each bark till they were floating in a cloud a few yards above her head.
She took a hard step back just as her foot started to buzz as if it had instantly fallen asleep. The bubbles hovered, bouncing and shimmering just above her.
Maggie shook her f
oot, keeping one eye on the departing dog who turned around and barked again. “Second time it’s done that this week,” she said annoyed, looking at her foot.
She let her purse dangle off of her wrist and dug her hands deeper into her pockets as she set off down the icy sidewalk, headed for the train that would carry her to her cubicle downtown in the part of the city known as the Loop where she worked as a copywriter for a large marketing firm.
Maggie was young enough to marvel at having a regular job but old enough to worry she wasn’t making progress fast enough. Twenty-nine, or twenty-fine as she liked to say, when a random guy would ask her age.
Twenty-fine and still single, living in a small apartment, not even a dog. Still time, she thought for the millionth time, making a mental list of all her friends who were just like her.
One of the bubbles broke off from the group as a small image gradually grew inside of it of a small, empty apartment.
“Pop!” The one bubble broke apart into a fine dust.
Maggie let the thought go as she shivered in the cold, picking her way over the ice. Anything below zero should qualify as arctic, she thought. On top of that, the same window of time, January to March, was when the weatherman gave two temperatures. One before the wind chill, and the other one, the one that counted, the temperature with the lake effect.
Another bubble moved away from the group as it seemed to fill with blue water, bobbling along.
“Twenty-two fucking degrees below,” she said, through the scarf wrapped around her face. Most of the cold didn’t penetrate the knit hat, scarf, long powder blue LL Bean puffy coat she had splurged on because it said in the description, ‘good till thirty below’, or double layer of gloves on her hands. The first layer was a pair from a dollar store, followed by a thick pair of mittens.
She was eight degrees away from finding out if the catalogue was right and the cold would finally get the chance to penetrate through to her bones. All because of lake effect.
Another bubble joined the first one, filling with more blue and grey water.
Lake Michigan. One of the Great Lakes that was also the great refrigerator to the east. Maggie knew it was to the east because of all the times someone said gave her directions by saying, “Well, it’s east, by the lake”, while she was standing on the far North side. Not only nowhere near the lake, but completely out of sight of the lake.
It was as if she was supposed to be able to intuitively feel the presence of the lake.
The big, beautiful body of water, with smooth, unnatural sand that an overzealous builder had dumped there over a hundred years ago, was also responsible for that last surge of bone-chilling cold. Everyone knew it.
One by one, more bubbles joined together, all of them shimmering a translucent gray-blue with a filling that seemed to be swishing around like water. Maggie pulled her coat closer, unaware.
“Whoop!” The word came out of her like a sound from a slide whistle. The note rose and fell and had a comical ring to it. It was followed by a dull ‘whomp’ as Maggie hit the ice hard, sitting down firmly on her ass as the sudden inertia spread throughout her back and out the top of her head. Her dark brown hair with the auburn highlights bounced around her shoulders.
A loud ‘pop’ erupted at the same moment Maggie let out a scream. The group of blue-gray bubbles broke apart and for a moment the light above her glittered, quickly fading into nothing.
“Fuck,” she said, trying to sound out every letter. It always made her feel better to enunciate. It was a leftover feeling from home and her mother’s habit of always correcting her English. It was the same reason she could never say ‘cheap’ unless something was actually poor quality.
It was strange the things her mother had been able to pass along to her children, Maggie and her two older sisters, and younger brother. Most of it was taught through observation, as in, what not to do. Don’t drink all afternoon. Don’t try to drive after drinking all afternoon. Don’t lose track of your children, especially those under ten years of age. Don’t let the younger ones use the stove, ever.
Maggie took a quick look around and noticed several people were giving her worried looks but no one was making a move to see if they could help. No one bothered to shout, even from a distance, “Are you alright?” Mostly, they look relieved as she stood up and brushed herself off. They could go back to ignoring her without any guilt.
This both pleased and pissed off Maggie. She hated any kind of attention but still, when you wander through the world without any workable relatives, people who can be called upon at a moment’s notice and you’re guaranteed they’ll be sane or sober enough to respond, it helps to be able to tell yourself that strangers might be there. But, no.
Maggie could feel her mood slipping toward the dark shelf. It’s what she called the heavy weight that seemed to come over her, often without warning. Suddenly, everything would seem harder, and pointless. It was often tough to shake, so she would have to ignore it and keep moving through her day. It was like an evil elf that would sit on her shoulder, digging its pointy imaginary finger into her brain, determined to get her to see just how fucked up the world really was turning out to be.
The remaining cloud of bubbles still trailing her steps took on the appearance of a small rain cloud. No one seemed to be able to see them. Maggie was too lost in thought to even notice.
She took a deep breath and tried it again. “Fuck,” she said, really coming down hard on that last k. She felt a little better and retrieved her purse and the lipstick that had rolled out onto the ice.
That was what she hated most about a Chicago winter. The rolling landscape of ice that formed different mounds or even worse, thin, black invisible sheets. Every year she watched the weather closely, hoping that once the first snowfall came, somewhere in late November, the temperatures would stay below freezing.
That way, the sidewalks would magically stay clear of anything but dry snow and she could maneuver to the El, the elevated subway that was a mile from her house, without looking like she was trying to balance on a high wire.
“Huh?” She startled slightly and felt her feet slide just for a moment. She locked her knees and put out her hands like she was trying to ice skate on Montrose Avenue. A young man in a long dark wool coat fashionable with the up and comers who worked in the financial district, walked by her in long, normal strides. He wasn’t even wearing boots. She watched him for a moment in awe, wondering how he did it. Not just keep his grip on the ice but keep the belief that he could do it. She licked her chapped lips, feeling a small piece of skin dangling off of her lip and tried to bite it off, holding her lip gently between her teeth as she worked the piece of skin around to just the right angle. It didn’t work and left her with a brief taste of blood in her mouth.
She headed toward the El again, passing by Happy Nails, her favorite nail shop, and the secondhand clothing store where she bought most of her skirts for work, calculating how many minutes she had before the next train would be at the platform. Her train. The one she liked to take to work down in the loop. The one that didn’t have Booger Man somewhere on it.
That was her nickname for the oversized man who was always on the 7:35 a.m. train, usually in the fifth car back, draped over an entire bench, vigorously picking his nose till they got to his stop at Merchandise Mart, only one stop ahead of Maggie’s at Washington and Wells. She could only hope that he wasn’t working in retail, running his meaty, booger-slimed hands over merchandise that some unwitting customer would later handle, or worse take home with them.
She knew it was an easily solvable problem. Go sit in another car, which she did, sometimes glancing at him through the small, greasy windows, fogged over from the warm, damp bodies all wrapped in wool, just before she hurried down to the next car. But, it bugged her that she knew, somewhere behind her, someone was busy mining for gold up a very large nostril.
Ten minutes after seven. She still had a chance at the earlier train if she could only convince herself to pic
k up the pace. “Do it, Maggie Potter, do it,” she whispered to herself.
Maggie watched the man walking ahead of her, noting how much he was pulling away, making progress faster than Maggie. It was a game she liked to play, ranking everyone against her own abilities. She particularly liked to play it with strangers. This guy was winning, which bugged her. She tried to walk faster, taking small, mincing steps across the uneven ice like they were ice moguls. Another game.
A couple of times she thought she felt a toe, or maybe the middle of her foot not gaining traction, but she was picking up her feet so quickly it didn’t add up to anything. Maybe that was the secret, she thought.
It didn’t help that she thought her inability to walk with confidence down an icy Chicago street was unique to her. No one else was holding up their arms, just a little, just in case.
Just as she reached the bagel shop that was right before the stairs she heard the rumble. The train was close, just close enough to make her think she could bound up the two flights of stairs and catch it in time. But that usually resulted in getting the opportunity to watch the doors close and the train pull out at a leisurely pace, as if the mission of thwarting a few early morning commuters was now complete and there was time to do something else.
So, no, she was too late.
Maggie’s phone buzzed in her pocket as she stepped out of the bitter cold into the small train station. She slid her hand into her pocket and pulled her phone out just far enough to see who it was and if it was worth answering before she got to work, or at least on a train.
She saw the bottom edge of the picture, a double-chin, and knew it was her mother. If her mother was bothering to call her there was a good chance she was still sober. Maggie hated missing out on these little opportunities to exchange what was, granted, useless information but it was still a connection. She needed even the lieof having a mother in her life.
