Ions Of Luck

by Markus Fredericks

  “I’m issuing you a citation. Your vehicle is illegally parked. I can tell that your car has been in a sideswipe accident. Can you tell me how and when that happened?”

  “It happened yesterday when my car was parked on the street in front of my house in Shoreline. I was the victim of a ‘hit-and-run’ accident. I have no idea who did it.”

  “That’s a shame,” said the policeman who was writing down notes. “There are way too many irresponsible drivers. So, if you live in Shoreline, can you tell me what you are doing on Mercer Island on a dead end street to some of the most exclusive homes in town?”

  Beads of sweat had formed on Aldo’s forehead. He racked his brain for an instant, plausible story… “I’m an avid bird enthusiast, and I’m a member of the Audubon Society. I was following up on a reported sighting that there was a Bald Eagle’s nest in the vicinity. I thought I spotted him while driving around, so I quickly pulled over and tried to see where the bird might be nesting.”

  The policeman became more suspicious when he looked down at his pant legs.

  “How come you have droplets of blood on your pants?” asked the leery, stern-looking policeman.

  “In my excitement of chasing the Bald Eagle, I ended up getting scratched by some blackberry bushes. I really ought to be more careful.”

  “Well, everything seems to check out, but before I go, I’d like to see your driver’s license and car registration.”

  Panic set in when Aldo knew that he had just left his wallet back at the house in Jessica’s hands. He decided to buy some time by unlocking the car and pulling out the registration card from the glove box.

  “OK, your car registration checks out. Now, just show me your driver’s license and we’ll soon be done.”

  Aldo knew he had to come up with a good lie, or else he might be arrested, and Danny could bleed to death. He decided to act surprised that his wallet was missing.

  “I’m sorry, officer, but I must have lost my wallet somewhere in the bushes when I was chasing after the Bald Eagle. If you can wait for a few minutes, I can go search for it.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come down to the station with me. Everything about you smells fishy.”

  Just as the policeman instructed Aldo to turn around to be handcuffed, he overheard the police dispatcher calling his car... “We have a possible burglary in progress at the Island Center Grocery. I need all available cars to head over there on the double. Be on the lookout for a 1990’s red Ford pickup truck.”

  “This is your lucky day,” said the policeman as he tore up the ticket. “Just make sure you get that junky-looking car out of here at once.”

  “Yes sir,” replied Aldo, who was a complete, nervous wreck. He climbed into his Toyota and headed straight home to get the lifesaving medical equipment for his new friend, Danny.

  7

  Now that Jessica knew the man she shot was definitely not her husband, she felt pangs of guilt for injuring him as a result of the mistaken identity. A blood-soaked Danny regained semi-consciousness as the tourniquet successfully halted his profuse bleeding, but he remained groggy and incoherent.

  She scooted Danny away from the sticky pool of blood, and then she brought him a cool, damp towel which she comfortingly placed around his neck. She sat next to him, and wrapped her right arm around his shoulder.

  “Hang in there, my traveler from a distant world,” said Jessica reassuringly. “Your friend Aldo, went to get some medical supplies to help you out.”

  Danny’s eyes open halfway, and at first he could only mutter a few sounds, but he seemed to somehow perk up when he noticed he was in the arms of his first, and only love, Jessica Hart – or at least the other world’s facsimile of her.

  When Jessica noticed he was alert, she asked him, “Would you like some water to drink?”

  Danny nodded, ‘yes’.

  A minute later, she returned with the water, and re-positioned herself next to Danny on the floor. She gently held the glass of water up to his lips. Danny was dehydrated as a result of losing so much blood, so he eagerly drank the whole glass.

  “Thank you,” said an increasingly conscious Danny.

  Jessica carefully wiped away a few drops of water which dribbled down his chin. Besides feeling sympathetic, she felt a mutual attraction to her wounded visitor. He reminded her of her husband from the earlier, happier years of their relationship.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for shooting you. I thought you were my unfaithful husband.”

  “You don’t need to apologize. You had every reason to believe I was him.”

  “Well, your world must have some eerie similarities to ours. You mentioned earlier about falling out of a ski lift. Well, my husband was seventeen when he went skiing at Stevens Pass. Somehow, he too fell out of a ski lift, but he landed on a soft, fluffy patch of snow. He was very lucky to have missed a boulder by only a couple of feet, and he was able to walk away without any injury.”

  “In my world, I wasn’t as lucky,” explained Danny as he continued to regain consciousness. “My life changed drastically when I was a seventeen year old high school senior. I also went with some friends to ski at Stevens Pass. However, I wasn’t as fortunate as my alter-ego was. You see, when I fell off the ski lift, I happened to land with an awful thud right on top of a large boulder. That snapped my spinal cord.”

  “Oh, my – that must have been a terrible thing to happen to a young, athletic guy. I assume the doctors must have been able to surgically repair your damaged nerves, since you are able to walk once again. Isn’t that right?”

  “My life would have been way easier if that were the case, but in my world I spent the last twelve years in a wheelchair. I was a paraplegic. Ever since that accident, my luck has been consistently awful – at times I even thought it was like some sort of curse. Anyway, I have no plausible explanation for being able to walk once again.”

  “A couple days ago I was still in my world,” continued Danny. “I was hit by a fast moving truck at a busy intersection when my motorized wheelchair lost power and stalled. I was catapulted into the air, and I happened to be struck by a bolt of lightning as I flew. By some aberration which defies normal physics, my entire body traveled down some wormhole portal to a central black hole. I thought I was meant to die, but instead I found a way to travel down an opposing tunnel which ended up in your world. Aldo is a physicist, and he probably can tell you a better theory of how I ended up in another dimension – a parallel universe at that.”

  “Wow – that is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard. By the way, you seem to know me by my maiden name. Is there a Jessica Hart in your world too?”

  “Absolutely. I met her in sixth grade when her family moved next door to us. I always had a very big crush on her.”

  Goosebumps sprang out all over Jessica’s arms…

  “I met my Danny in sixth grade as well when my family moved next door to his folks, but I didn’t date him until our senior year in high school. My first date with him was when he asked me out to the prom.”

  As their conversation continued, they both felt a mutual bond developing. Of course, Danny had always been in love with his Jessica, but the other Jessica found herself spellbound by the new Danny from another world… He seemed so much like the unspoiled version of her husband before he became rich and famous.

  Suddenly, a voice came across the intercom, “It’s me, Aldo. I’m back. Jessica, can you please open the gate?”

  Before she left Danny’s side she said, “Your help has arrived. I’ll be right back,” and then she gave Danny a small, sweet little kiss – on his lips.

  Although Danny felt more physical pain now that he was wide awake, he was very happy to finally have gotten a kiss from the girl of his dreams.

  As Jessica watched the gate shut after Aldo pulled in his Toyota, she glanced at her watch.

  “What took you so long?”

  “Never mind,” replied Aldo. “If someone didn’t have to
be so paranoid about my return, I would have been able to show a policeman some proper ID. He was just about ready to haul me off to the police station. Besides, all my cash and credit cards were in my wallet in your possession, and I was running very low on gas. I had to scrounge around my house to find a dollar and twelve cents to buy a few drops of gas, or else I’d have had to walk all the way over here.”

  “I’m sorry for not trusting you – here’s your wallet. I’m glad you made it back. Danny still looks as white as a sheet, but at least he’s conscious.”

  “That’s great to hear,” replied Aldo, “but first let me check on his condition, and then we’ll figure out what we can do about the transfusion.”

  Jessica and Aldo found Danny still sitting on the floor, and he was grimacing in pain.

  “Hey, Danny – hang in there a little bit longer,” said Aldo as he grabbed him by the wrist to check his pulse. “Your pulse is very weak. You’re going to need some extra blood.”

  Aldo turned to Jessica and said, “I need your help in the garage. We need to extract some blood from your husband in order to save my friend’s life.”

  Aldo watched as Jessica retrieved the gun from her desk, but he also noticed that she had a sweet, softer side to her personality when she gently kissed Danny’s cheek, and told him to wait until they returned with some replacement blood.

  As they approached the garage’s interior door, they could hear the muffled sounds of someone pounding on the inner walls of the limo and crying out, “Let me out of here!”

  “Oh no,” said Jessica. “It sounds like the jerk is awake.”

  “Well, he shouldn’t pose much of a problem since I securely tied him up with duct-tape.”

  When Aldo opened up the back door, the underwear-clad husband spilled out onto the concrete floor in the garage. He was wide awake, fully alert, and extremely upset that his hands and feet were strapped together.

  “Hey, Jessica – call the cops. This stupid limo driver assaulted me, and then he stole all my clothes. He was supposed to drive me to the airport. I had an important meeting in New York with my publisher.”

  “Oh Danny, just shut your mouth,” said Jessica as she pulled out her gun and pointed it at him. She added, “Aldo, you should have duct-taped his mouth shut too. He never has anything nice to say.”

  “Say, Jessica, honey – what’s up with the gun?” asked her husband as he noticed a bunch of bloody smears on her bathrobe.

  “I accidentally shot an intruder in the house who I thought was you. You can stop telling me your bullshit – I know all about your plans to meet up with Babs in the Cayman Islands. Now the other guy is bleeding to death, so he needs some of your blood.”

  “Honey dear, have you lost your mind? You sound like a crazy woman.”

  A concerned looking Aldo had to remind Jessica of the unique situation…

  “Jessica, you mustn’t kill your husband. As much as he deserves to die, his death will kill the nice Danny from the other universe for creating an imbalance of positive and negative ions of luck.”

  “Oh my God. Jessica honey, where on earth did you find this psycho, weirdo freak?” asked her husband about the man he simply thought was a limo driver.

  “He’s a brilliant, wonderful physics professor. I’m going to make sure I give him millions of dollars to continue his research on communication chambers. I’ll just donate to him the money you pilfered from me to give to Babs. Now, shut up and be still while he extracts a quart or two of blood from you intravenously, or we can do it my way – I’ll just shoot the tip of your dick off, and let the professor hold his empty flask directly beneath it.”

  As scared, irate, and even embarrassed as her husband was, he still concluded that for whatever unknown reason they did not actually want to kill him. He was confused by the limo driver’s reference to ‘the other Danny’, since he had been knocked out before even seeing his so-called, identical twin. He figured he would sooner or later either be able to escape or be rescued by the police. Thus, he decided to act calmly and said, “Well, I’m in no position to argue, so go ahead and take some of my blood.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Aldo as he helped him sit up, leaning against the side of the limo. Next, he brought out a set of hypodermic needles. “OK, don’t move. I need to find a good vein.”

  About 15 minutes later, Aldo had extracted approximately a quart and a half of the husband’s blood. The nearly naked guy was feeling a bit lightheaded, but he was still conscious. Aldo helped to stuff him back up into the limo.

  “Even though you are all strapped up in duct-tape, I need you to be sure that you’ll behave yourself out here. Since I don’t have any sedatives to administer to you, I’m just going to have to subdue you the old fashioned way,” and with that, Aldo knocked him out cold again with a hard blow to the back of his head. He lifted his body back into the passenger section of the limo.

  “Sweet dreams, honey,” said Jessica with a sarcastic smirk on her face as they left the garage to go save the other Danny’s life.

  Back upstairs, Danny had lost consciousness as a result of dangerously low blood pressure. Aldo certainly was no medic, but with some trial and error he managed to pump all the extra blood into Danny’s veins.

  After the transfusion, Danny was still unconscious, but he was breathing normally and his pulse felt stronger. Jessica helped Aldo to lift him into her bed, and they proceeded to clean and dress his bullet hole wound. Fortunately, the blood had already coagulated, although it was still a gory sight.

  “All in all, the holes in his leg are fairly small – even the wound on the back side of his leg where the bullet exited isn’t particularly large,” commented Aldo.

  “My gun is just a 22 caliber,” explained Jessica.

  “Well, he’s going to be alright,” said Aldo with a look of relief on his face, as they loosened the tourniquet and finished cleaning him up.

  “Aldo, you did a wonderful job of saving Danny’s life. I want you to know that I will donate as much money as you need so that you can keep your lab.”

  “Thanks, Jessica, but right now our problems are only just beginning. Soon the police will be looking for a missing stretch limousine. This limo has a kidnapped celebrity tied up in the back, and a dead Samoan limo driver stuffed into the trunk. Besides, I’m quite certain that a fancy limo like this one has a built-in GPS system which makes it easy to find. So, before we get any unwelcome visitors showing up, we need to clean up a lake of blood, and figure out how to make a huge, stretch limousine vanish into thin air.”

  8

  Mr. and Mrs. Donaldson were extremely wealthy, but they had no full-time servants living with them. However, they had a weekly maid service and seasonal gardening help. Fortunately, it was late October, and the gardener had just mowed the lawn for the final time until next spring. On the other hand, a contractor had been hired to build an indoor swimming pool adjoining the house. The excavation for the pool was already complete, and the contractor had to wait for a few days until the concrete subcontractor was available. The next stage was scheduled to begin the day after tomorrow.

  “I need to call to our contractor to reschedule,” explained a somewhat anxious Jessica, “or else his crew will show up in two days to continue building our swimming pool addition. Also, our maid service comes every Thursday, which is just three days from now, so please help me get all the blood cleaned up from the hardwood floor.”

  “Danny can’t be moved for at least a couple of days while he recovers a bit, so I’ll be here to assist you in any possible way. So, where do you keep your mop?”

  “We keep all our cleaning supplies in the laundry room downstairs. I’ll gather everything we need.”

  To minimize the vulgarity of thoroughly cleaning up a big lake of drying blood, along with hundreds of scattered, minor droplets of blood, Aldo engaged Jessica in an in depth conversation while they worked together…

  “Before too long, the limo company will be calling to see if t
he limo ever made it here. Of course, you can buy some time by telling them that your husband chose to cancel his trip, and that he never went to the airport. However, you can count on the police to make an appearance sooner or later when the limo is nowhere to be found.”

  “While my unfaithful husband really deserves to be taught a lesson, I feel terribly bad for the poor limo driver – and what about his family? When the dust settles, I want to make sure that his family will be well taken care of. How did he end up dying anyway?”

  “Well, when we needed to ‘borrow’ the limo, we had no idea it was driven by a hulking brute. The big Samoan was enraged, and he grabbed me by my neck. He was choking the bejesus out of me when Danny hit him in the back of the head with a bottle. Danny had no intention of hurting him. He was just trying to protect me. When we stuffed him into the trunk, I thought the limo driver was just knocked out for a short time. I had no idea that he would end up dead. It’s possible he woke up and struggled inside the trunk to the point where a heart attack set in, but that’s just a guess. I would never have become involved with this whole fiasco if I thought anyone might die. I agree that it would be nice to make sure that his family is well taken care of.”

  A guilt-ridden Aldo chose to change the direction of the conversation…

  “Anyway, once Danny is able to walk on his own power again, he and I have the option of leaving and just disappearing from your life. Even if your husband tries to implicate you in some way, you really haven’t broken any laws. Conversely, Danny and I are guilty of involuntary manslaughter of the limo driver, kidnapping your husband, assault, attempted extortion, fraud – you name it – we’d be in a heap of trouble if we are ever caught. Before Danny’s gunshot to the leg, his plan was to use your husband’s airplane ticket to fly to the Cayman Islands. If things got out of hand for me, I had already thought of joining him there as well, but everything changed now that Danny was shot. Besides, we are now responsible for the limo driver’s death, so we may have to run and hide somewhere domestically at first.”