Don't Bother

by Jeremy Martin

  Star slammed the bathroom door behind her as she stepped out into the hallway. She stopped between the TV and Stet, maroon-faced.

  "It's done with now," she said, "I bet you're happy to know."

  He squelched the sigh before it left his throat. "It isn't like we weren't going to the clinic next week anyhow."

  She pushed her hands down the front of her T-shirt as though she'd had no towel in the bathroom. Stet followed the gesture to the dime-sized spotting on the front of her underwear. Star caught his gaze and stomped back to the bathroom to flush the toilet.

  His first thought was to yell at her, but he stopped himself. He was somehow sure that this would not cause a backup in the septic tank…

  So he'd have to wait for the current jackpot to grow to a worthwhile amount and keep his mind open to number suggestions. The problem now was he couldn't quit thinking of numbers. By the day of the next drawing, he'd filled several pages with lottery numbers, all guaranteed to hit. Seriously, this time it's me, from the future – listen to me! You have to buy a ticket with the following numbers.

  The cost of the tickets he'd need to buy was more than the money set aside for the vinyl-siding payment and the cable bill combined, more than the money he got for returning that prepaid-cellphone-minute card to the store, more than he got for pawning the TV set, but not more than Star could earn at the club when she had to. Mostly none of that mattered, though, when one of the tickets, numbers culled from deep into the third page, hit.

  After they'd moved to the island, after they'd won that state's jackpot, too, and all the gas station clerks had Stet's driver's license info memorized, Star asked, "Isn't there something better, less selfish, you might be doing with this power you got?"

  Stet finished transcribing the final number and closed his notebook. "I see where you're going with this, babe," he said. "Trouble is I'm stuck in my own head here, and my memories are too insignificant to do anyone else any good. Nobody invited me to Hitler's baby shower, you know?"

  A yellow school bus rolled along the dirt road behind their house at a certain time every afternoon. The children riding it, Stet was pretty confident, were too far away to make out the joint he smoked on the back porch while he waited to wave at them.

  Star came out and he offered her a drag, but she flinched like he'd tried to jam a severed finger in her mouth.

  "Promise me," she said, turning to keep her back to the approaching school bus. "Promise me that you will never, no matter what, let me take any of that drug."

  Stet looked down at the joint.

  "Not that," she said. "The drug. I have to know that I will never take it in the future. I need to know that for a fact. I get these thoughts–"

  "I promise," Stet said, but the next afternoon, he caught her stretching lengths of razor wire fence across the dirt road. She hunched down close to the ground, carefully placing each wire exactly perpendicular to the last. In her left hand she gripped the shotgun so tight her forearm veins plumped to blue cables. She pointed the gun at Stet when she heard him approach. The tip of the barrel was stained red, the same shade as her lipstick.

  "I have to do it," she said, her words coming in sopping gasps, "to save the future."

  He slapped the gun to the ground and pulled her back inside the house.

  Inside, he thrust a pie plate full of the drug at her.

  "Here," he said. "Take it. You need to know how it really is."

  She threw herself on the bed then, and refused to take the pillow from her face.

  Stet left the pan lying on the end of the bed next to her booted feet and closed the door on his way out.

  In the morning, Stet felt funny about waking up by himself, but he couldn't remember ever having shared his house with anyone.

  17.

  "We got a three-peater here, Jenny." Olson brandished the report like negative test results.

  Jennings did not respond.

  "A three-time lottery winner?" Olson sat the report on Jennings' desk with a deliberate noise. Jennings picked it up, but knew he wouldn't have to read it.

  "Sounds like a case for the IRS."

  "No, that's a repeat win." Olson snatched the report back from Jennings' hand. "The odds against hitting all the numbers in a state lottery the first time are ridiculous, billions to one. The second time? That's just impossible. The only explanation is a cheat."

  "And a dumb one."

  "True. That's when the auditors investigate the winner, figure out his scam. But a third win? That's our jurisdiction. After you've eliminated any possibility of wrongdoing, the most likely explanation —" he handed the report back to Jennings. "Read it for yourself. Bottom of the second page."

  Jennings turned the page and read: "... indicates either an ability to foresee future events or access to a time-travel device."

  13.

  Stet sat on the sofa watching a 120-inch high-resolution TV set tuned to static, with the volume muted. He had taken to reciting the numbers in his head out loud, since there was no reason to continue writing them down. He'd had to build a second garage to store his jet-skis.

  The doorbell rang, interrupting Stet halfway through a ticket. After he sat for a moment remembering what that noise signified, Stet got up and walked to the peephole.

  On the opposite side of the door stood a black man, tall and thin, wearing cream-colored slacks and an oversized pastel palm-tree shirt that looked like it was purchased at the airport gift shop. The shirt hung at unnatural angles as though concealing body armor. The man held a leather ID case open and presented to the peephole for Stet's inspection – either an official government license or one convincing enough. The agent held the other hand behind his back as though keeping his balance as he leaned slightly forward.

  Stet opened the door. Jennings pushed inside and took his hand from behind him, revealing the electroshock gun he was holding. He pulled the trigger and the pointed cartridge latched itself on the Stet’s bare pectoral muscle. He fell to the carpet, convulsing.

  "So you're no psychic," Jennings hollered over Stet's involuntary whimpers. "How about you show me to your time machine?"

  Too late, Jennings noticed Stet held something in his clenched hand. Jennings dropped the gun and dove to the ground, but that gave Stet enough time to put his hand to his mouth and swallow. He closed his eyes and quit moving. Jennings could not slap him awake. Some kind of time-traveler's suicide pill, Jennings figured.

  13.

  The instant Jennings mashed the doorbell with his thumb, the door flew open. Behind it stood Stet, holding a 40mm single-shot riot gun loaded with a high-impact baton round. Stet pulled the trigger. The baton hit Jennings midchest, making a dull pop against his bullet-proof vest, followed immediately by the unmistakable cracking of ribs. Jennings reached to grab Stet's shirt, but by that time Jennings had been thrown several feet away from where he thought he was. He landed on his back in briar-filled bushes.

  Stet ran past him toward the toolshed at the end of the driveway.

  Jennings, a few minutes later, came staggering after him. Inside the shed, he found stacks of empty pie plates, and a not-quite-closed panel in the wooden floor. He struggled to get a toe hold beneath it, but Jennings finally kicked the panel open with his shoe, revealing a thick steel door.

  Jennings reached slowly, so slowly, into his pocket for the small brick of C-4.

  Inside, Stet could hear the agent somehow tampering with the door. He popped another chunk of the drug into his mouth then and began to chew, flinching at the flavor. He should’ve kept something to drink down here. He swallowed just as the door exploded from its hinges and dropped to the ground beneath it, shaking the room and raising clouds of smoke and dust.

  Jennings followed soon after, screaming but sticking the landing.

  Stet pointed the empty riot gun at the shape and closed his eyes. Jennings stepped through the smoke and shot, but Stet was already on the ground.

  13.

  Jennings stepped through t
he smoke holding the pistol in front of him. He found the man, Stetson, holding his arms extended above his head.

  "You win, OK?" he said quickly, almost startling Jennings bad enough to make him squeeze the trigger. "Just don't–"

  One of the Stet’s hands was closed into a fist, concealing something. Jennings shot him in the kneecap.

  Stet folded over on himself and fell face first to the floor, letting go of the object he'd been holding — a crusty brown piece of something, like a hunk of peanut brittle made from mud. It crumbled against the imitation tile.

  "Just take it, man," Stet shrieked. He'd rolled over now and held his bloody knee in both hands. "Take it, and don't shoot me next time."

  35.

  Stet woke strapped tight to an adjustable hospital bed in a windowless gray room. An IV needle protruded from his right forearm, connected by tubes to two transparent bags: one a standard saline-drip, and the other filled with a murky brown liquid Stet was sickly certain he could identify. The top of his head was painfully cold, and it itched. A throat cleared, and Stet realized for the first time that an older man, jowled and balding, sat in a chair at the foot of the bed.

  "Please, take the drug," Stet said. "Take all of it. Do whatever you want to with it."

  The man forced a laugh. "You can't imagine the damage this drug has done to my department, Stetson."

  Stet looked down at his knee. The bullet wound had been bandaged but not well, and it hurt in a way he was afraid to consider too carefully. The old man waited to reestablish eye contact and continued.

  "None of my agents took it, you understand. But almost everyone who knew of its existence has ended up on medical leave. It had my people evacuating government buildings for bomb scares they'd only imagined, placing panicked phone calls to senators and the president — the president — warning of nonexistent assassination attempts, every one of them convinced they would take the drug at some future date to prevent past catastrophe. Your friend Jennings? I found him sitting at his desk naked, rubbing his own feces into his hair. Do you know what he said to me?"

  Stet could guess.

  The man broke eye contact. "And there've been other ... poisoned thoughts as well. What we need is for this drug of yours to never have existed. I guess you know what you’re going to do."

  "That won’t —"

  "Nurse?"

  A male nurse — or, more realistically, a large tattooed man, perhaps a special forces operative, dressed in a nurse's scrubs — stepped out from somewhere behind Stet's head.

  "Get him started, please," the old man said, and the nurse began fiddling with a valve connected to the brown-filled bag.

  13.

  The doorbell rang, and Stet reached for the 40mm. He considered, then loaded a live round into the —

  Stet flung himself forward against the straps, puking tar into the bucket the nurse held beneath his chin.

  "Nice try," the old man said. "We've got electrodes hooked to your brain, ready to trigger nausea anytime you start to access a recent memory. Again, nurse, if you please."

  He refused to call the cops. He managed to convince himself to put the ring back, but he still suspected what the drug could do. This time he wouldn't bother with the gun at all, he would just go running out the back —

  And then he was vomiting again.

  "Nurse increase the dosage," the old man said. "Don't let up this time. Do it right and this will all go away, won't it?"

  He kicked the dog, but then he didn't have a dog. He tripped running and bumped his chin on the end table. He ate popsicles till he couldn't feel the bruise even though he knew they'd give him a tummy ache. He dropped Valentines into almost everyone's box, but the teacher caught him skipping over Flabigail Jenkins’ and punched his good-citizen slip. He drove a girl home in her car, apologizing the whole way while she wiped her tongue on her sweatshirt sleeve.

  His father removed the oversized hat he claimed their name demanded, and sat it carefully down next to his sleeping bag. The boy zipped the tent flap shut as hard as he could.

  "I'm supposed to be sharing a tent with another kid my age," the boy demanded. "Why am I the only boy on this campout who has to share a tent with his dad?"

  His father reached into the duffle bag and removed a flattened vinyl rectangle. "I bet you thought I forgot our pillows, didn't you?" He put a valve to his lips and blew, expanding a corner of the rectangle, then removed it from his face. "It's inflatable."

  "It's not fair. I hate it."

  But later in the dark, head resting on the pillow he’d been unable to inflate by himself: "Dad?" It was the first time – in his life – hadn't said "Daddy."

  "Yes?"

  "I love you." He spoke slow and careful. He didn't want his voice to shake. "I love you — and I'm glad I get to share the tent with you."

  "I love you too, son. Now get some sleep. Tomorrow, we're going canoeing."

  (Bloody Mary)

  The first time Rachael conjured Bloody Mary was at Skyler Shumway’s tenth birthday slumber party. Rachael had originally heard of Bloody Mary, a ghost that appeared when you spoke her name into a mirror, the year before and had stayed awake that whole night worrying. A lengthy horizontal mirror claimed the wall opposite Rachael’s bed at home, so Rachael spent seven hours cowering in her closet, picturing Mary – either a grieving mother who’d gouged her own eyes out after seeing her children drown or an ancient queen who’d had her head cut-off (Tyler Johnson swore to God she knew a girl who called out to Bloody Mary only to flee the room when the mirror began broadcasting images of a Civil War battle) – climbing out of that mirror, throwing a shriveled leg over into Rachael’s room. When she landed, she’d make just enough noise to wake only Rachael, who was sure she’d be too frightened to scream.

  Years later, when discussing Skyler Shumway’s sleepover with the other attendees at her high school graduation party, Rachael would discover she was the only one who’d admit to remembering the incident.

  Skyler Shumway’s parents, who left a group of nine- and ten-year-old girls to look after one another while they went out to dinner, had a master bathroom lined with mirrors. The Milky Way marbled floor and the eggshell porcelain sink, toilet, and oversized bathtub constituted the room’s only non-reflective surfaces. Once Skyler showed the girls this bathroom, once the idea to conjure Bloody Mary had been suggested, nothing else would do.

  The girls disagreed on the proper summoning chant. Grace and Skyler R. insisted it was “Do you believe in Bloody Mary? I believe in Bloody Mary.” Emma, Rachael, and Skyler S. insisted that repeating the name Bloody Mary was enough, but each girl insisted on a different number of repetitions. Joey something-or-other, whose family would move away during the first few months of fifth grade, declared that the girls must first enter into a blood pact and become an actual coven of witches. Skyler S. took her father’s straight razor from the sink ledge and hugged it to her chest. While Joey huffed in protest, the other girls agreed to say “Do you believe in Bloody Mary? I believe in Bloody Mary” followed by twelve additional repetitions of the name with a brief pause after each to avoid redundancy. (Rachael would repeat this formula for years afterward without success. Eventually the idea that Bloody Mary hadn’t been, couldn’t be, conjured became scarier than the thought of the ghost herself.)

  Skyler S. slid her forefinger down the touchpad by the door, dimming the lights to darkness. Then, without discussing it first, the girls joined hands. Everyone waited for Skyler S. to start. It was her house. You could hear her inhaling, puffing her chest.

  “Ooh, so romantic,” Rachael said. The girls all giggled.

  “Shut up,” Joey whispered, “or she isn’t going to come.”

  The giggling resumed, stopped, started again.

  “We have to be serious,” Joey said. There was mucus in her voice.

  “Joey wants us to be quiet,” Rachael said. “Because she’s trying to take a dump in here.”

  Rachael made a fart noise. Everyone but
Joey made a fart noise. The giggling became gasping, snorting, panting, almost silence. Then somebody flushed the toilet.

  The girls eventually ran out of breath. “OK,” Skyler S. said. “My parents will be home soon, and we aren’t supposed to play in here.”

  “This is where Mr. and Mrs. Shumway take a dump,” Rachael said. Nobody laughed.

  “Let’s just do this on the count of three,” Skyler S. said. “One. Two. Three.”

  “Do you believe in Bloody Mary?” everyone but Rachael asked. Everyone held hands again.

  “I believe in bloodymarybloodymarybloodymarybloodymary Bloody Mary.” Silence. Nothing.

  “Told ya,” Emma said. “You gotta say it thirteen times.”

  “Shut up,” Joey said. “We’re gonna have to start over now.”

  “We aren’t starting over,” Skyler S. said. “We’re—”

  Rachael squeezed the hands on either side of her. They squeezed back. Everyone was quiet. Their pupils had expanded to adapt to the dark. Six girls’ reflections had materialized now, duplicated, triplicated, and funhoused around the bathroom. Their eyes glowed like wolves’. Pronounced bags materialized under each. Crow’s feet. Upper lips lined with faint luminescent fur protruded over retracted lowers, sucked in by seemingly toothless gums. Queen of the backward world peering in from every direction, what did she think of walking the mirror-lined corridors of her lightless castle waiting for those who called to her? She had been royalty, overthrown and beheaded with an axe already bloody from the slaughtering of hogs. She sat on the world’s throne, the Virgin Magdalene made pregnant by whatever Roman soldier the godhead chose to inhabit, purified by the friction heat of countless cocks. The blank features eroded by the grief of holding her only true son-lover dragged down from the cross while blood-streaked water gushed from his spear-pierced side. She’d be the one to discover that the fanatics took his body – that that rich man’s tomb so willingly offered had been nothing but a setup.

  Bloody Mary, Rachael would come to realize over the years, did not kill those who summoned her but traded places with them. She continued on while they were left staring back at their own reflections, watching the lives they’d go on to lead.