A Chronoclysm.
He’s not sure if it’s the hangover talking at first. He clenches his jaw and closes his eyes to reassure himself of his sobriety. He lets slip a vocalized groan that echoes within the vacant space of the classroom, and its sound slices through the silence, providing an antidote to his uncertainty.
He takes a hesitant step toward the desk. He’d upset the lid when he shrank back from the old hat box on top of it, so he picks it up and places it on the veneered surface next to a pile of evidence that ought not to exist. He looks around for signs of any presence, human or otherwise, before he returns his attention to the photographs in the old hat box. He’s never considered himself to be a paranoid man. After all, he’s just a never-married thirty-eight-year-old janitor who works in his old high school. Nevertheless the trove of evidence before him makes him question his sanity. There’s a photograph of him at the prom, twenty years earlier, with Elaine Cooper, the prettiest girl in the whole school; a candid snapshot of him downing a shot of tequila on a beach somewhere tropical; a portrait of him posing with a toddler who resembles him so much so as to be confident of a genetic bond; a pretty, smiling woman on the porch at Grandma’s house, wearing his favorite ball cap, signed by McGwire himself; a thinner, fitter him with more lines around the eyes and less on the forehead that could have been taken no more than a few weeks ago. There’s no doubt that this is his life, that is, if his life had been lived over again by someone smarter, luckier.
He retraces the chronology of his evening up to the point at which he found the box. He remembers getting to work, and that he, Dan and Carl divided their duties equally. It was his night to take care of the drama auditorium, so he took care of that first, before he headed down the D-wing to look after the classrooms that were in his charge. He remembers going through the first seven, all of which were occupied by teachers, emptying the trash and sweeping the floors. He remembers that he had to blast some fresh graffiti from a desk in Hannah Climent’s classroom, and that one of the kids had made a weeping mess with a half-eaten cup of strawberry yogurt in Jennifer Wiles’ room. He remembers that he felt compelled to make his way all the way to the end of the hall, and that D-7—which is unoccupied, spare and not in use by any of the faculty at Belmont High—was unlocked, its door cracked open to let in the rude fluorescence of the hallway illumination. He remembers thinking that everything was as it should have been, with the exception of the unlocked, open door and the addition of a old, blue-and-white-striped hat box on the teacher’s desk. He didn’t think there was any risk of opening it, until he had a moment to examine the contents.
He chases a brave impulse and buries his hands inside the box. He discovers that there are hundreds of photographs, all the way to the very base of the box, and every last one of them is a testament to another life that might have been lived by him.
There’s too much to consider. His brain misfires and rejects what lies before him. He doesn’t understand who could have done this to him. He hurriedly picks up the photographs that have fallen to the desk and onto the floor, and he shoves them inside the box and replaces the lid with conviction. He lifts the box and carries it outside the classroom, and he stops himself before dropping it inside the big black trash sack in his cleaning cart. The yogurt from the accident in Ms. Wiles’ room would mar the outside of the box, if not the photographs inside it, too, and after a few moments of consideration, he tucks it underneath the sack, so that only he knows of its existence. He steps back inside D-7 to insure that it looks as it should. There’s a photograph on the floor that escaped his attention, and he collects it and shoves it in his pocket before examining it. He looks around one last time, shuts off the light, closes the door behind him and locks it.
He sees to the rest of his duties, has a couple of cigarettes and a beer with Dan and Carl before the night ends, and concludes his evening with a half-hearted “see you tomorrow” that he lobs at his co-workers. He trails behind their cars as they leave the parking lot, and he circles around the block a few times to make sure that no one else is around. He returns to the school, rushes back to the custodial closet in the main hallway and retrieves the hat box from his cart. He fights with the late March wind to keep its lid on while he locks the doors, and when he gets to his pickup, he places the hat box at the farthest end of the passenger seat, next to the door. He knows that it’s filled with the repellent evidence of a life that he can’t claim as his own, but he wants to protect it. He feels better with the knowledge that they’re in his truck, with him, and subject to his decision as to whether they should continue to exist or not.
He empties his pockets when he gets to his grim apartment. He’d forgotten about the photograph in his pocket, and he examines the cramped handwriting on the back. It’s Mom’s, and it reads, “Len and Gary, May 17, 1986.” He knows the date very well. It’s the day they found Dad dead, hung in the closet of a motel in Overland Park, Kansas. He’d killed himself the night before, or so the police estimated.
He flips around the photo, and it’s a picture of his dad, Leonard, and him, Gary Maloret, posing for a proud, smiling photograph in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Gary knows it never happened. The farthest east he’s ever been is Cincinnati, for his great uncle’s funeral. That he’s never travelled very far outside of St. Louis is something that’s always bothered him, but he’s never had the money for things like travel. He’s always given most of his paycheck to Mom and his little sister April, when she’s clean, and there isn’t ever very much left.
He feels like he ought to be sadder, more affected by what he’s found in the box, but he finds the whole business to be more pathetic than anything else. He takes his position on his couch with a beer and a pack of cigarettes, and he stares at the photograph in the half-light of the TV.
He glances at the hat box on the kitchen counter on his way to bed. He has no desire to fantasize about what he never had, and he resolves to head out to the countryside on Sunday afternoon, burn every last photograph and toss the ashes into the river.
* * *
Gary speaks to the woman at the bailiff’s desk at the municipal court, and he wonders if he looks presentable enough in his short-sleeved shirt, khakis and tie to speak to a judge. He looks down at his attire and feels like he’s borrowed an outfit from Joe Rosenthal, one of the assistant principals at school. Everyone at school likes and respects Rosenthal, and he hopes that his clothes are able to produce a similar impression.
The woman at reception types on a keyboard and stares at the information on the screen in front of her. He wishes he could see what she’s reading. “Gary Maloret. Yes.” She fetches a document from her printer, stamps it with the date and hands it to him. “Please proceed down the hallway, through the double doors and into Room 4. It’s the second door on the left. They’ll be with you shortly.”
He doesn’t understand. “I’m meeting the judge in there?”
“Not in your case. Someone will be with you shortly.” She diverts her attention to the person standing next to him. “Can I help you?”
He steps out of the way and obeys, heading down the hallway, through the double doors and into Room 4. It’s a small, windowless conference room with a table and four chairs.
He takes a seat and reads the sheet that the woman at reception handed him. There’s nothing on it to indicate why he’s not supposed to speak to the judge about his traffic violation. He grumbles at the idea that if he were an attractive nineteen-year-old girl with a low-cut blouse, he’d’ve gotten away with running through that red light. He taps the table with his fingers in anticipation. There’s nothing to look at in the room except the pattern of the veneer on the table top. He focuses on it, and the patterns shift. He shakes his head and wishes he’d had time for another cup of coffee before he left for court.
The door opens, and it startles him. A middle-aged woman enters. She’s got beady eyes and straw-like hair in a page-boy cut, and she’s mismatched a navy blue power suit with a tattered white t-shirt that has some sort of Asian-looking writing on it. The smell of burnt doll hair accompanies her into the room. “Good morning!”
“Good morning.”
She takes a seat in front of him at the table. “Forgive the formalities. We’ve found that people don’t show if we don’t give them a reason to come in, and it has to be a voluntary thing. Red tape. Ghastly stuff. Worse than contracts.” She peers at the name on the tab of a file folder. “Let’s see—Mr. Maloret. Will you correctly identify the forty-nine visages that I bear?”
“Uh—sorry? I—”
“No? OK. This might be another plebe job.” She opens the file and flips through its pages. “I’m called Shiravis. I’ll be handling your case. I take it you’ve had an opportunity to review the excerpts?”
“What—what excerpts?” He searches the form that the woman at reception gave him for excerpts of any kind, and the page leaves him no clue as to what is being asked of him.
“Oh mercy. A squawk job.” Shiravis looks up from the file. “Yesterday. Maybe the day before. Did you find something that made you aware that the life you’re living isn’t your own?”
There’s a sensation that some of the air has been forcefully pushed out of his gut. “What?”
“You did find them. Don’t worry. You’re not going crazy. What you saw were pieces of a life that you might have lived, had you not been drawn into a situational anomaly created by a 3,800-year-old rogue genie or djinn or pixie or whatever you want to call it. You, personally, weren’t supposed to be caught up in that, and so my superiors—whatever—have instructed my department to offer you a chance for retribution, if you so desire. Are you interested?” Shiravis laces her fingers together and gives her thumbs a twiddle while she waits for a response.
He blinks a few times and pinches his leg hard. He’s certain he’s awake and at the courthouse, but he’s also certain that the woman mentioned a genie. He wonders if it’s possible to pinch himself while he’s still sleeping and expect it to register it as pain. “I—I don’t—”
Shiravis grimaces and makes a few clicking sounds. “Why is it always on Thursdays?” She rolls her eyes. “You’re Gary Wade Maloret, born on January 8, 1973, right?”
“Yes?”
“And you’re the son of Leonard Wade Maloret, born on February 26, 1947, right?”
“Yes…”
“Your father Leonard was part of an unfortunate event that occurred back in 1984. There was an operative who went off the rails and began making unauthorized deals, and whenever those sorts of deals occur, it’s problematic, to say the very least. Unauthorized deals always involve collateral damage, such as in your case, and it takes years, if not centuries, to track down all the ripples and undo the damage. You wouldn’t believe the headache, but it’s all in the name of maintaining and preserving the interversal balance. Not my style, really, but I can’t complain too loudly without expecting consequences myself. Anyway—”
Shiravis clears her throat. “Back in 1984, this genie or devil or rumpelstiltskin ran amok and made a deal with a certain—I guess coven or brotherhood might be the best way of describing it—and this brotherhood went on to acquire power that isn’t allowed. Plebes and squawks—forgive me—talents and humans aren’t entitled to that sort of fortune. It upsets the balance. There’s not much I can tell you, unfortunately, because you are a human, and your level of interversal comprehension is, well, shall we say lacking. For example, right now, you probably see me as nothing more than a woman in a suit, whereas a talent—that is to say, a human with what you’d call extrasensory perceptions—might perceive me as valkyrie or banshee or maybe even something as hilarious as a guardian angel. You’re all wrong, of course. No time to explain why, but trust me when I say that your brain wouldn’t be able to handle the explanation anyway. Know that there are higher powers, though, and they are not to be trifled with.
“This genie or rakshasa or gremlin upset how certain timelines were supposed to occur in order to seal the deal. Your father was never supposed to have committed suicide at the Super 8 Motel in Overland Park, Kansas, in 1986, but he was one of the humans who was marked by this brotherhood as a sacrificial lamb when they made this deal back in ‘84. His death ensured that certain beneficial energies that were supposed to be doled out evenly were earmarked for someone else. As a result, your life has been a chain of misfortune because they took your right to know balance. With me?”
He’s not sure how to respond.
“That’s about the best I can hope for, I imagine.” Shiravis grins, but her eyes retain a sense of supercilious boredom. “Now, as your adjustment representative, it’s my duty to allow you the opportunity to reclaim some of those energies from those who have unfairly benefitted from this debacle. I’m not saying we can go back in time in this instance—the damage wasn’t that bad—but I can tell you that we’re able to offer you…” Shiravis goes silent and glares at him. The potency of her stare boring through him feels as though it’s actively peeking beneath his flesh, and he shivers in response. “Well. Stop eating all those chimichangas, lose forty pounds and we’re talking a potential three decades that’ll make up for the two-and-a-half of unabated misery. So—are you interested?”
He must be dreaming. Dreams are, in many ways, the only source of release for him, and he realizes that the best thing would be to go along with what she’s offering him. He’ll wake up later, repeat the breakfasting, showering and dressing, head to the courthouse and sort out everything in the morning with his moving violation. “What do I have to do?”
Shiravis rolls her eyes again. “‘It’s all just a dream’ is better than ‘no,’ I guess. First things first.” She slides out a form from the file, and she conjures a pen from the air itself. It twinkles when she slides the cap off and replaces it on the end. She makes three circles and two exes upon the page. “Initial here, here and here, sign here and sign and date here. Use day-month-year format, please, so that you write 31-03-2011. Understood?”
She holds out the pen for him, and he takes it. He holds up the page. The words themselves are blurred, as if he were looking at them through prescription glasses that were terribly wrong for him, and the character of the blur shifts in the light as he adjusts the page in front of him. “What does this say?”
“It’s a 9322GP-dash-C standard retribution contract. It means that you agree to carry out your end of what needs to be done to restore balance, particularly as it applies to everyone within your bloodline who was affected by the misallocation of energy.”
“So my Mom and April’ll have better luck, too?”
“Yessssss.” Shiravis’ upper lip floats up into a snarl. “It’s all there in the 9322GP-dash-C.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Let me check.” Shiravis flips through several pages in the file. “Oh, this is easy! It’s just finding a replacement. You’ll be able to do this, especially because you’ll have free will in your arsenal. Just sign, please, I’ll send in Axarita, and she’ll tell you what you have to do. And then, with a little luck, you won’t ever have to see my forty-nine-sided face again. Deal?” Shiravis holds out the pen for him.
The pen twinkles again, contradicting the draining nature of the fluorescent light in the room. He leaps at the chance of being able to bring Mom and April some kind of joy, even if only in his dreams, and he obeys, initialing, signing and dating where appropriate.
“Stupendous. You wait here.” Shiravis inserts the contract in his file and closes the file. “Axarita will be in here in a minute to outline the specifics of your task. I doubt I’ll ever see you again, but if you should run into any unforeseeable problems, please don’t hesitate to give me a call.” Shiravis slaps a business card on the table and slides it to him. “It’s been a pleasure.” She leaves the room without an attempt at eye contact or any sort of social pleasantry, and the door closes behind her.
He picks up the card and examines it. The language on it is just as blurred as the contract that he’s just signed. He hopes he won’t ever have to contact her, for he wouldn’t know how if he needed to.
He remembers that it’s all just a dream, though, and he happily tucks the card into the pocket of his shirt.
The door opens. He presumes that it’s Axarita, but he’s unprepared for what Axarita is. Shiravis mentioned that Axarita was a she, but considering all outward appearances, she distinctly looks like a very, very young boy in Spider-Man footed pajamas. He doesn’t appear to be more than five or six years old. Gary considers that perhaps this visitor isn’t Axarita at all. “Are you lost, son?”
“Don’t patronize me, Maloret.” Its—no, her voice is distinctly low, adult, feminine and confident. “I don’t expect you to appreciate what I’m telling you, squawk, but I’m stuck with this visage in this dimension until I can pay off my debt. I’m your shipper. That means that you’re stuck with me until you fulfill the terms of your contract.”
“What’s a shipper?”
“Shippers put you on your path to make things happen.”
“So what do I have to do?”
“We have to locate and make arrangements for your replacement. Tell me you have a car. It makes things so much easier when I don’t have to take the bus, looking like this.”
“I came here in my truck.”
“Beautiful. Let’s go.”
Axarita opens the door with all the authority that her voice suggests and heads down the hall, and her carriage and gait align with that of an intimidating, powerful, mature female. Gary gives chase out into the lobby and into the parking lot. Axarita heads directly for Gary’s pickup, and she trots around to the passenger side. She’s so tiny that Gary can’t see her when he unlocks his own door, and it isn’t until Gary slides over and unlocks the passenger side that Axarita is visible again. She climbs up into the passenger seat.
“Before we go anywhere, let me set some ground rules. Rule number one: no arguing with me. That includes arguing with me about where we’re going. When I say turn, you turn. When I say run, you run. When I say ‘step back and let me handle this,’ back off, find a place to hide and wait until I come for you. Rule number two: no giving me shit about my visage. There’s nothing I can do about it, so you’re just going to have to put up with it. Believe me, squawk, I’m much stronger than I look, and no one’s going to willingly fuck with someone who looks like me until it’s too late. If you do give me shit about how I look, I will not hesitate to pull your spinal cord out of your asshole and use it to repair bicycle tires. There’re a few reasons I’ve been sentenced to this visage, and one of them is because I don’t respond well to teasing. Got it?”
Gary starts the truck. “Got it. But what are you? Other than a shipper?”
“Shiravis didn’t tell ya, did she? Useless, that one. We’re Katavikrists.”
“What’s a Katavikrist?”
“We observe change as it occurs on its own and change what must be changed. We’re not from here.”
“Where are you from?”
“Where and when is more like it. Not here. That’s all you need to know for right now.” Axarita rolls down the window, and she stands to get a good look outside the window. “South. South by southwest. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Gary is game to continue dreaming, even though the dream seems to go on and on, without any hint of stopping.
“You’re not dreaming. You’re going to put your truck into reverse, leave this parking lot and get on the I-55 south. The sooner we leave, the sooner we reach the replacement, the sooner this is all over, which leaves you wide open to convince yourself that this was all just a dream later, ok? So let’s leave now, before I start to craft an internal justification that non-action is equivalent to resistance and argumentative behavior, thus breaking rule number one.”
Gary shrugs and silently obeys, guiding his little silver pickup truck toward the southbound I-55.
* * *
Axarita’s head pokes out the window of Gary’s truck, and Gary can’t help but think that the woman or whathaveyou in a tiny boy suit looks a rather like a dog. Axarita’s voice, though it ought to be lost in the din of the wind resistance, is louder than ever, and it sounds through the cab of the pickup. “Will you stop that?”
“Stop what?”
“First of all, if you haven’t managed to process it in that teensy squawker mind of yours, I can read your thoughts. Secondly, I told you that I don’t respond well to teasing. I wish I could take the visage of a dog. Dogs aren’t as limiting as little boys. Thirdly, you signed a contract, we’re on our way to take care of what you willingly signed up for, and no, this is not a dream. So knock it off.”
Gary brakes and steers to the side of the road. The rumble strips at the side of the road noisily jar the entire truck. He shuts off the engine when the pickup has come to a complete stop.
Axarita regards him with ferocious scrutiny. “Why have you stopped?”
“Prove that this isn’t a dream, then. Prove to me that I’m awake, because I don’t believe that you’re what you say you are.”
“If solid reality doesn’t convince you that you’re awake, then I’ve got nothing for you.”
“Then at least tell me exactly what we’re on our way to do.”
“Start driving again, and I’ll tell you while we’re on the way.”
“Why can’t you tell me now?”
Gary realizes with a sharp shock that his entire perspective has changed. He is no longer sitting in the passenger seat of his truck. The rough, harsh contours of the rumble strips on the highway dig into his spine and the back of his head. His chest feels tight, as if something more than a few hundred pounds is pressing upon it. He lifts his head, and he sees that Axarita is looming over him. She has Gary pinned to the ground by means of a solitary finger pressed into his sternum.
“You are breaking rule number one. My patience is thin, and this will be your only warning. I appreciate it when squawks follow directions without resistance. If you think that this little feat of mine is impressive, think again. We Katavikrists are capable of bending spacetime to our will, so count on it when I say that I can put into practice a thousand different functions for the sinuses within your skull.”
The weight is lifted from his chest, and he’s upright again, sitting in the driver’s seat of his pickup. Gary doesn’t mean to be startled, but his hands shake and his heart races. He draws in a few quick breaths to restore some of his nerve.
Axarita’s stares out the window once more. “Drive. Please.”
Gary starts the truck, and he steers them back onto the road. He can still feel the latent pressure upon his chest, as well as bits of asphalt poking through his shirt into his back. It occurs to him, with a deep sense of despair, that regardless of his grasp of reality, he is trapped inside his truck with this thing until this thing decides that he’s free to go.
“You’re not a hostage. This was your own doing. Don’t hold me responsible because you don’t want to go through with this. I’m just doing my job, too.”
“What have I said that I’m going to do anyway?”
Axarita glances at him through the corner of his eye. “To be fair, it’s not entirely your fault that you have no idea what’s going on.” He resumes peering out the window. “Shiravis should’ve told you before she handed you over to me. She’s an adjuster. She’s supposed to be responsible for devising plans to fix damage within the dimensional fabric of the united interverses, but she’s really just a low-level bureaucrat. She’s under orders, just like me. Katavikrists like us only get involved when things are truly fucked, otherwise, none of you squawks know we’re here.”
“Why do keep calling me—or us—squawks?”
Axarita smirks. “That was the first sound any of you—and I mean all mortal creatures—on this world in this universe made. You’re all pretty much the same, you know, whether you like it or not.
“Anyway, you’d never know it, but many of the interverses swing back and forth between the polarities—positive and negative, that is—and someone stole your share of positive. They did it so well that you didn’t even realize that things ought to be different for you and that you shouldn’t have to suffer through life like this. So we’re going to fix it. Or rather, I’m going to take you there, and you’re going to fix it.”
“Why can’t you fix it for me?”
“Because it’s your life and the lives of the squawks you care about. I can’t fix that. You have to choose to fix it yourself.”
“What if I’m fine with the way things are?”
“Then you shouldn’t’ve signed the contract.”
“What happens if I don’t fix things?”
“You know how I’ve threatened you with physical violence and death?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll have to do that to you and worse. Just do what you’ve signed up to do, ok?”
“Fine. You said I have to find a replacement and make arrangements. What exactly do I have to do?” Gary figures that the best thing is just to get it over with, and he hopes that he’ll be free to go by mid-afternoon.
The air in the cab grows very thick without any warning, and it smells sickeningly sweet. Gary feels like he’s breathing in filaments of cotton candy.
Axarita’s voice acquires an even more authoritative tone. “Start braking slowly. On each mark that I provide, decrease your speed by five miles per hour. Stay in this lane, but be prepared to go off the road and onto the shoulder. Got it?”
“OK.” Gary obeys, for Axarita’s tone unnerves him. He gently applies the brake, and the speed decreases. “What’s going on?”
“One moment… Mark.”
Gary presses the brake pedal, and the speedometer goes from 60 to 55.
“Mark.”
The speedometer decreases to 50. An assembly line of cars in the left lane overtake Gary’s silver little pickup. He looks in the rear view mirror, and the luxury sedan behind him has edged up to no more than a car length away. Its driver is agitated and flashes the lights for him to increase his speed.
“Mark.”
45 MPH. The luxury sedan behind him edges into the left lane and passes him quickly, and the driver flips Gary the bird as he drives past. All the cars behind him are anxious to make it into the other lane before the construction barriers ahead force everyone to merge into a single, concrete-barrier-lined corridor, and he watches their migration in the mirror.
“Increase your speed to 70. Now.”
Gary presses the gas pedal all the way to the floor, and the pickup lurches forward, struggling to reach a greater speed. He pats the dashboard. “Come on, baby, don’t fail me now.”
He guides his truck into the single lane of traffic. Over his shoulder, he notices that Axarita is staring at him. “It’s a shame that you’re sentimental about this vehicle.”
There’s a blast of cold air from the air conditioner. Gary blinks in shock, for he and Axarita are speeding ahead through the single lane of traffic in another car. He overcorrects slightly and narrowly avoids striking the side of the concrete barrier.
He glances at the rear view mirror, just in time to see his pickup crumpling into the side of the concrete barrier, followed by the catastrophe of a pile-up of cars colliding into the wreckage of his truck.
Axarita’s mouth widens into a wicked smile. “That’ll slow him down.”
************
Dear Reader, You’ve just read the first 5,000 words of a horror-y/sci-fi-ish shorter story I started and have, for the moment, abandoned. I might do something with it at some point—there’s too much in this story for me to take on right now—but for the moment, it is what it is. Feel free to yell at me for not finishing it. ♥ EAB