Undermind: Nine Stories

Undermind

Nine Stories

by

Edward M Wolfe

This is a work of fiction. All of the
characters, organizations, events and locations portrayed in this
story are either products of the author’s imagination or used
fictitiously.

ISBN:
9781311911223

Undermind: Nine
Stories
© 2015 Noetic ePress
All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition

Dedicated to my two brothers and to O.
Henry, Stephen King, and Rod Serling for all of the joy and
inspiration they’ve given me with their short stories.

The Piano Man

I Didn’t Kill Her

The CEO

Lost Father

The Dregs

Halloween Bully

When Everything Changed

The Storyteller

Devon’s Last Chance

About the Author

Other Books by this Author

Dave’s bright idea to solve the problem of
mounting bills turned him into a super-hero and a basket case. He
couldn’t explain it, nor could he prove it, but he was certain that
it was a piano that was responsible for his super-powers – what he
now referred to as his curse. One stupid little accident and his
life took a crazy turn that now had him wondering how he was going
to stay alive.

As Dave headed toward the door, his three year
old son perceived that he was leaving and ran toward him with his
hands raised as high as they could go. This meant he wanted his
father to pick him up. Dave did so, tightly but gently hugging his
son and telling him he’d be back in just a little while.

“I love you. Be good for mommy,” he said, and
lowered his son to the floor.

Several weeks ago, Dave’s piano tuning business
was in a slump. There had been slumps before, but this one was
going on so long that he had started dipping into his savings to
pay his monthly bills. He decided to run an unusual special for his
type of business and put out an ad saying, “Buy one, get one
free!”

This was clearly silly at first glance because
very few people, if any, have two pianos. But Dave figured what
would happen is that two people who knew each other would split the
cost of a tuning, with the purchaser designating their friend to
receive the second free tuning. Or, with no time limit on the deal,
someone could get one tuning now, and another one later.

As it turned out, he got only one call from the
ad, and after tuning that woman’s piano, she gave her free tuning
to her sister. And that’s what ruined Dave’s life, and apparently,
there was no turning back.

After Dave gathered up his tools, collected
payment and the address of Abigail’s sister’s house, he thanked her
for calling to confirm that now would be a good time to head
over.

The weather was perfect but Dave didn’t mind
working on a beautiful Saturday. He was glad to have the work.
Maybe the sisters would tell their friends with pianos what a good
job he’d done and he’d get more work soon.

The further Dave drove, the more he noticed the
decline of the neighborhoods. When he finally arrived at Gloria’s,
he double-checked the address and confirmed he was at the right
place.

This house did not resemble those of his usual
customers in any way. There was an old beat-up car in the driveway.
Old, dirty toys were left out on the lawn and appeared to have been
there for some time. The paint was peeling from the siding and one
of the bedroom windows was covered with cardboard.

He wouldn’t have expected there to even be a
piano inside, but if there was, it made sense for Abigail to give
her free tuning to her sister. She probably couldn’t afford it on
her own.

Dave grabbed his tool bag from the passenger
seat and went up to the front door, telling himself he’d make this
as quick as possible. They probably didn’t play much anyway and
wouldn’t notice if the pitch was a tiny bit off here and there.

The door swung open and a woman said, “Are you
the piano guy?”

“Yes, I am,” Dave answered.

“Come on in,” the woman said, pulling the screen
door open. “You’ll have to ignore the mess. I wasn’t expecting
anyone today.”

“That’s no problem at all,” Dave said, following
Gloria and stepping over a soiled disposable diaper lying on the
dirty wooden floor.

He saw the piano against the wall next to the
dining room table. Boxes, magazines and miscellaneous junk was
piled on top of it. Gloria removed everything, setting it all on
the table. It was an upright Weber that he thought might’ve looked
very nice if it wasn’t coated with dust and scratches. At least
this won’t take long, he thought.

Dave got right to work, lifting the top board
and removing the upper front board. He set his tool bag on the
bench, opened it and removed several foam wedges and his tuning
lever.

“Care for some coffee?” Gloria asked.

“Thank you. But no, I’m fine.” He had glanced in
the kitchen when he entered the dining room and seeing the
unsanitary condition, he felt it wouldn’t be safe to drink from any
dish that came from there.

“Well, if you change your mind....”

“I’ll let you know. Thank you.”

“Do you need the volume on the TV turned
down?”

“No. It won’t affect my tuner at all. Do you
happen to know how long it’s been since your last tuning?”

“I guess they would’ve tuned it in the store
before they delivered it. And that woulda been, what… about six
years ago? It was a gift from my dad. He bought both of us one.
Abigail and me.”

“Oh. I see. That was very nice of him.”

“I probably coulda got a car with what he spent.
Not a real good one, but something better ‘n that piece of shit I
got out there. And I don’t even play the damned piano.”

“Does anyone in your family play?”

“Nope.”

Gloria stood just inside the kitchen, sipping
coffee and watching Dave. He wondered what he was doing here as he
took his digital tuner out of his bag and lowered the top board to
set his wedges on top of it.

“Does someone plan on starting, or maybe taking
lessons or something?

“Not really. Theo— Teddy bangs on it now and
then, but no one else.”

“I see,” Dave replied, but without really
seeing. He clamped his tuner at the top of the left side board and
inserted his thickest wedge between the lowest bass strings.

“Abigail said she paid for the tuning, so I
wasn’t gonna turn down somethin’ free. Ya know what I mean?”

“Yep,” he replied and began tapping the lowest
key and adjusting the tuning nut as he did so. Maybe the ‘buy one,
get one free’ was a pretty bad idea after all, he thought. But now
he was even more determined to do a quickie job. No one would even
know if the pitch was terribly off.

He tuned the bass strings up to middle C then
switched to the other end of the piano. He started tuning the high
end with a couple Papp’s treble mutes, quickly working his way back
to the center. After a few minutes, he used the Papp’s and wedges
together, and that’s when it happened. He was hitting a key with
his left hand, tapping on the tuning lever with his right hand for
tiny incremental movements and one of the Papp’s mutes fell off the
top board and hit a string somewhere inside the piano.

When the plastic mute created a high tone on
impact, it blended with the lower tone he had been playing and
suddenly he heard a weird harmonic that made his ears itch for a
second. He tilted his head as if to shake water out of his ear and
felt a little silly doing it. He turned to see if Gloria was still
watching him and as soon as he looked at her, images flashed into
his mind.

First was the face of man with fat, unshaved
cheeks and close-cropped hair with a diagonal scar cutting across a
natural part on the side of his head. Then a young boy; his face
frozen in a painful scream. A belt with a large metal buckle arcing
through the air. White flesh with welts, lacerations, and dripping
blood. Then the boy’s face again, but closer in, focusing on his
eye which was red and puffy all around the eye socket.

Dave shook his head again, hoping to clear the
nasty images that seemed to originate from somewhere outside his
own mind. His heart was racing and he felt like he’d just witnessed
a terrible car wreck.

“Are you all right, mister?”

Dave heard Gloria’s voice and he snapped back to
life. The images stopped. They lingered in his memory, but they
stopped coming in fast and furious in vivid 3D.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Well, you look like you saw a ghost. A big mean
one.”

“I think I’m not feeling all that well actually.
I’ll be finished in a few more minutes then I’ll head on home and
lie down.”

“Can I get you some water?”

“Thanks, but I’m okay.” He almost laughed,
thinking about how people always offered a glass of water no matter
the problem. Aliens studying earthlings would conclude that we
thought water was a cure-all for dizziness, heartbreak, loss of a
loved one, and so on.

Dave quickly tuned the remaining strings and
noticed his hands were shaking each time he inserted the mute. He
didn’t even try for perfect pitch now. He left some strings a
little sharp and others a little flat and he justified it by
telling himself that no one here played the piano anyway. He just
suddenly felt the need to get out of this house.

He replaced the upper board when he was
finished, put his tools in his bag and let Gloria know that he was
all done. Teddy should notice a definite improvement. As he walked
toward the door, he said, “Thank you, and thank Abigail.
Enjoy!”

As he reached for the door, it quickly swung
inward, hitting his hand and then his head and knocking him
backwards. The back of Dave’s legs hit the side of the couch behind
him and he fell backwards onto it, then rolled into a sitting
position. He put a hand on his head where the pain was.

“Who the hell are you?” a voice roared.

Dave looked up at a big burly man staring down
at him. His heart felt like it jump-started and went into
overdrive.

“Just calm down. He’s the piano man. You can
call my sister if you don’t believe me.”

“We already have a piano!”

“He ain’t sellin’ ‘em, you dope. He tunes ‘em
up!”

“I hope you ain’t you paid him ‘cause we ain’t
got no money to be throwin’ away on this nonsense.”

“Abigail paid, so don’t worry about it!”

The man walked toward the kitchen, revealing a
small boy who had been standing behind him, completely hidden by
his big legs. Dave felt his muscles turn to water, his brain seized
and suddenly it was hard to breathe.

The man and the boy, they were the ones. He’d
seen them just a few minutes ago when the terrible images flashed
into his mind like lightning strikes. The boy had a swollen lip and
a black eye.

“Don’t be rude, Teddy. Introduce yourself to the
piano man.”

The boy was biting the skin off his upper lip
and glanced at Gloria, then looked back at Dave.

“My name is Theodore,” he said, then shifted his
eyes toward Gloria as if he expected her to say something.

Dave was glad for something to focus on for a
moment as he waited to feel normal enough to stand and walk so he
could get out of this strange house.

“Hi Theodore. It’s nice to meet you. My name is
Dave.” He put out his hand and Theodore slowly came forward and
shook it with his tiny hand.

“His name is Teddy. Don’t listen to him,” Gloria
instructed from the kitchen, just out of sight.

Dave saw a barely perceptible shake of
Theodore’s head.

“I fixed up your piano, Teddy. It should sound a
lot better the next time you play.”

The boy mouthed the name “Theodore” in
response.

The brief exchange with the boy did what Dave
was hoping and gave him a slight sense of normality. He felt
extremely awkward about the fact that he’d been knocked in the head
by the man of the house without even a hint of an apology. But he
decided it didn’t matter. He would just say goodbye again and get
the heck out of there.

He stood up and the boy took a few steps back.
One foot landed on the diaper and he lost his footing and fell,
landing on his butt. He started to cry and suddenly the big man
appeared in the room like a fast moving freight train.

“What are you crying for now? Are you try’na
wake up your baby sister?”

He bent down and grabbed one of the boy’s hands
and hauled him up and dragged him out of the room and down a
hallway. Dave could hear the man yelling and the boy crying. He
couldn’t believe these people.