Undermind: Nine Stories (27 page)

If Lance was going to turn, this was when it
would happen. Devon drifted over to Lance’s doorway, watching him
in both dimensions – physical and astral. It took the very last of
his energy reserves to move fully into the physical realm but he
decided to chance it. If Lance didn’t turn, it wouldn’t matter
anymore anyway. There was no way he could possibly start on someone
new. It would be the end for him if he failed. Now that he was
completely in the physical world he saw everything as humans did,
as if the dark cellophane had been removed and everything was
bright and clear. He could still see the glowing colors from the
astral plane and these are what he focused on now.

There were some strong dark yellows of fear and
anxiety coming from the people on the street, but those were
nothing compared to what Lance might generate. At first, Lance’s
glow was dark brown with wide streaks of red and black but the
brown started to deepen until it turned black and the red held on
briefly, looking like lava trails from a volcano spreading out into
the black and then those trails turned black also.

Devon smiled.

Lance felt something inside him die. Everything
in his mind turned dark. A cold hate was forming.  The tiniest
shred of hope that things could ever be good again just went out
like someone blowing out the tiny flame of a match in a big, dark
room. Lance had nothing left to hold on to. No possible source of
happiness, warmth or love for the rest of his life.

He embraced the cold darkness that he felt
spreading from the center of his being out to his extremities.
Devon felt the powerful infusion of new energy as Lance gave up his
soul completely to darkness. Devon was ecstatic and reveled in the
reward he had so diligently worked for.

Lance felt like he was reborn. He was free of
mental anguish. His mind was crystal clear. The sadness was gone.
No more anger. No pain from loss. No unhappiness of any kind. Just
pure, beautiful hatred. It felt clear, clean and refreshing, like
everything just clicked into place. He had nothing more to worry
about. Not a care in the world. He couldn’t even imagine anything
that could bother him now or take away this sense of satisfaction.
He had nothing left to lose and now he was free.

He reached for the nine millimeter rifle that
was leaning in the corner by the front door next to an umbrella. He
thumbed off the safety and chambered a round. A shell flew off to
his right and landed on the coffee table. He forgot that it had
already been chambered. It had been a long time since he’d been to
the shooting range. That was in another life.

Sitting up in his doorway, he brought the rifle
up to his shoulder and looked through the iron sight. He aimed at
the head of the man who was still gesturing wildly and proclaiming
his innocence.  “I never even s
aw
 
him!” Lance slowly squeezed the trigger and the
man toppled over to his left side and lay still in the street. The
crowd of people around Domino screamed and scattered in different
directions.

Lance chose the easiest target from among the
running figures – the fat lady from down the street. She was
running slower than the others and she would be the hardest to
miss. He aimed at her back and fired. The bullet just grazed her
arm. She didn’t even notice as she continued running across the
street, then turned as she ran up onto the grass and headed for her
house.

Lance aimed again more carefully this time,
gently squeezed the trigger and the top half of her large body flew
forward like she was diving for first base and she skidded along
the grass. He fired another shot at the mass on the ground. She
rolled halfway over and was still.

Lance laughed as he looked at the people running
into their houses while others began coming out of theirs to see
what was going on. “Fuck you all!” He laughed again like he was
having the most fun he’d had in a long time. The man across the
street where the rabbits lived opened his front door and stood in
the doorway, looking around to determine why he heard women
screaming and fireworks going off. Maybe someone had hurt
themselves. A hole appeared in the door beside his head as he heard
another firecracker explode.

He looked toward the source of the sound and saw
Lance sitting in his doorway pointing a rifle at him. He didn’t
understand. This didn’t make sense. Why would Lance… the thought
was cut off as a bullet entered his face below his right eye and he
crumpled to the ground.

Lance thought about calling a taxi so he could
go to Tom’s house and introduce Tom and Kim to the new Lance. That
sounded like a great idea. In fact, he could probably just honk the
horn and get them to come outside. Then he could shoot them right
through the window of the taxi without even having to strain a
muscle getting out.

***

Marcel had been watching Lance and checking on
him periodically since he’d gotten the alert from a Watcher that
there had been an unnatural intervention in Lance’s life. As soon
as Corrine’s car impacted with Lance’s, his fate was extrinsically
worsened. This intervention caused a major deviation from the
probability outcomes on Lance’s timeline and a Watcher detected the
anomaly immediately after it happened. Such extreme alterations
were almost always the result of a dark intervention.

The Watcher viewed the accident and the events
that would likely follow as a result of it. Multiple lives would be
unnaturally impacted in contradiction to all of their fate
probabilities which called for an emergency counter-intervention.
The dark ones knew that such actions would be countered, but all
too often there were limited resources for a proper
counter-intervention and so they got away with their interference.
This Devon being was apparently counting on getting away with this.
It would be a nice win for his side if he did. After viewing the
grand finale that Devon had planned, the Watcher sent an alert to a
light being named Marcel who began tracking Lance as much as he
could when he could spare the time, which was not as much as he’d
like since he had so many others to keep an eye on for
counter-intervention.

Just this week Marcel had already lost a baby
whose mother had put it in a microwave, a man who shot fourteen of
his relatives at his daughter’s birthday party and twin girls who
committed suicide together. Marcel and others like him were badly
outnumbered and it was getting worse all the time.

Marcel had watched as Lance took two
pain-killers and then dozed off on his couch while thinking about
getting up to get the mail. Marcel perceived Devon nearby,
anxiously waiting to finish his work with Lance. Marcel tapped into
Lance’s subconscious and projected into his mind the outcome that
Devon intended for Lance. Marcel used the strongest projection
force he could muster, hoping that he was infusing his projection
with enough charge to make an impact on Lance that this
was
not
 
just a dream. This was
a vision of his
 
immediate
 
future - unless
 
he
 
changed
it.

Marcel thought of one additional thing that
might help keep Lance on the side of light and he instantly
relocated. He did a fast scan of the woman’s mind. He redirected as
much energy as he could away from her guilt and fear and channeled
it toward her hopes and desires, and then immediately projected a
thought that he prayed she would act on.

***

Lance positioned the rifle so that the butt of
it was on his porch and the barrel was pointing at the porch roof.
He used the rifle as a crutch to get into a standing position. He
needed to reload and get his phone off the couch to call a taxi. As
he walked toward his phone, he continued to use the rifle as a
crutch for the time being. He was too hot and tired to pick up his
crutches. He saw his phone sitting on the couch, and when he looked
at it, it began ringing.

The ringing phone pulled Lance out of his brief,
drug-induced slumber. He woke up and opened his eyes and felt a
wave of dizziness pass through his head and so he closed them. When
he opened them again, he knew he was sitting on the couch and
Domino was lying on the floor where he’d been for the last hour or
so. His phone stopped ringing. Lance was completely disoriented. He
didn’t know how he had gotten to the couch or how it was possible
that Domino was inside, and alive. He looked out his living room
window and saw his neighbor across the street watering his
lawn.

He looked to his left. There were his crutches,
leaning against the couch, right where he had left them when he
came into the living room and turned the TV on. His rifle was in
the corner leaning against the wall next to his umbrella where it
had been gathering dust for months.

“Oh, my God! That was the most intensely insane
dream I ever had in my life.” But it hadn’t
 
felt
 
like a
dream. It was far too detailed. The sulfur and nitrates from the
gunpowder had burned his nose. His shoulder had ached from the
recoil of each shot he had fired.

As much as he hated the direction his life had
taken, he did not want it to ever become as bad as that dream.
Chills ran down his entire body as he recalled the total blackness
he had felt in his heart.  He had liked it in his dream, but
now he was repulsed by it. No love was possible with a feeling like
inside him. He looked at Domino and let his heart swell with the
love he felt for him. Then he thought of Kim and the feeling
intensified. This is how he wanted to be. He wanted to love and be
loved. It was all the reason he needed to keep on living and
thinking positive, no matter what.

He remembered that he was going to get up and
check the mail. If what he had just experienced was just a dream,
then he still needed to get the mail and see if a check had
arrived. The feeling he had that this dream was much more than a
dream made him that he better take precautions – just in case. He
was not going to lose Domino to some freak accident.

“Domino. Walk?”

Dominio quickly got up and ran to the coat pegs
where his leash was hanging. He grabbed the end of his leash with
his teeth and pulled it down from the peg it was draped over and
brought it to Lance, dropping it at his feet. Domino wagged his
tail furiously. He wasn’t in trouble,
 
and
 
he was
going on a walk! He was so excited and wiggling so much it was
difficult for Lance to connect the leash to his collar.

“Still!” Lance ordered, and with great effort,
Domino complied.  When Domino heard the click of the catch
being released after Lance had finally gotten it in place, he ran
toward the door only to be yanked by his neck to a sudden stop. He
tried to move forward and couldn’t. He looked back to see why Lance
was holding him back. But Lance wasn’t even holding the leash. He
had looped it through its own handle after wrapping it around the
heavy oak leg of the coffee table. Domino tried to lunge forward
but the table was too heavy. He couldn’t drag it. He did not
understand how he was going to be able to go on a walk. There must
be some mistake. He was stuck.

“Just a minute, puppy. Wait!”

Lance hobbled over to the door. He opened it and
felt the summer heat emanating off the glass of the storm door. He
leaned on his left crutch and held the right crutch with his left
hand while reaching around the door jamb for the mailbox with the
other. He grabbed the mail sticking out of the top of the mailbox.
As he pulled out the mail that was crammed into the mailbox, he
heard paper tearing and he froze. He looked across the street and
saw a rabbit come running up out of a hole in the base of a dead
tree. The rabbit ran like crazy in a zig-zag, self-defense pattern
that was meant to make it harder for hawks and snakes to catch it.
Domino saw the rabbit and he barked with excitement but could not
move.

Lance felt chills run down his spine and the
hair on his arms stood up. He brought the hand that was holding the
mail back inside and shut the door. He was breathing hard as if he
had just barely survived a deadly encounter, like when a car
crosses the center line on the highway and you swerve out of the
way just in time to avoid a head-on collision, saving your own life
when you hadn’t even realized it was in danger. He looked at Domino
who was looking up at him, wagging his tail and questioning him
with his eyes.

“Just hold on, Dom.” Domino barked once in a
high pitch. “Wait,” Lance ordered.

Domino sat and held a perfect sitting pose with
his ears straight up, alert. He was used to waiting. He didn’t like
it, but sometimes Lance needed to put on shoes before a walk, or he
would pee in a large bowl of water in the bathing room. The waiting
before a walk was usually not very long.

Lance positioned his crutches under his armpits
and made his way to the couch. He swiveled around and sat, leaning
the crutches against the seat cushion. He took a deep breath to
calm himself and remembered that he needed to see if there was a
check in the bundle of mail he had brought in. He just couldn’t
shake the feeling that something momentous had just happened, even
though he had done nothing more mundane than retrieve his mail.

He flipped through the envelopes and although he
didn’t see the one he wanted from Ohio, he did have one from his
sub-contractor. He opened it and unfolded the check that was
inside. $2,025. That was his cut of a new store’s surveillance
installation. As long as the sub did a good job and the company
kept outfitting their stores as they’d agreed to, things wouldn’t
be as bad as he thought they might be. The sub could easily do one
store a week, maybe a little less as the stores got further away,
but Lance couldn’t complain about making two grand a week for
sitting on his ass in a drugged stupor. It wasn’t going to be
anywhere near as nice as twelve thousand a week would have been,
but under the circumstances, he wasn’t going to complain.