Photo © 2011 Gerald Pereira CC BY 2.0

Something a little different today. I signed up to take part in Tony Noland’s Great April Fool’s Day #FridayFlash Blogswap. Tony paired me up with Danielle La Paglia, who has in gracious silence endured my haphazard attempt at keeping to a deadline.

(Oy. Just be thankful you’re not my publisher.)

Danielle and I both wrote a story around the same prompt. I’m posting hers here, and she’s posting my story over on her blog. Tony gave us the following prompt to inspire our stories: “three free tickets to a movie.”

-TimK

Substitute

by Danielle La Paglia

Sandy fingered the tickets in her coat pocket, sliding their slick backs together as she stared at the house. It had seemed like such a good idea when she’d stopped by the theater two days ago, but the thin slips of paper felt inadequate and meaningless now. What good were three free tickets when they’d lost so much? She thought of putting the car in drive and heading home, but John stepped onto the porch and waived. There was no turning back.

A gust of wind whipped her hair across her face as she stepped from the car. The icy blast beat against her exposed cheeks and sent a flurry of snowflakes into the car before she could slam the door shut. Even the wind knew it was a bad idea.

She ran to the shelter of the porch, hoping to sneak a quick hug from John, a small shot of courage and comfort to push her through. But Maddy shoved the screen door open and ushered her siblings onto the porch. Sorrow hung on them like a heavy cloak, paling their skin, darkening the shadows in their eyes. Even seven-year-old Emily had lost her sparkle. The bright pink smile she used to wear was a soft peach line tugged down at the corners.

Sandy knew she was a poor substitute for the mother they’d lost. She wasn’t trying to replace her. She only hoped to give them a break from the reality that had been forced upon them, even if it was only for a few hours. But seeing their somber expressions, she felt the sting of her mistake. Only time would make it better, not her, not this. She wanted to run, make a hasty retreat and leave them to what was left of their broken family, but John spoke.

“You girls behave and try to have a good time.” He hugged each one in turn then Maddy hustled them down the steps. “Thank you,” he said and squeezed Sandy’s hand. They’d been dating nearly a year and, despite the three-year-old divorce settlement, it was still hard on the girls. Sandy gave a weak smile then jogged to the car.

They rode in near silence to the theater. Each of Sandy’s attempts at conversation were shut down with a one-word answer or a half-hearted nod. Resigned to their silence, she turned on the radio and let the music try to warm the stale atmosphere instead.

As they stepped into the lobby, Emily and Sarah’s faces brightened. At seven and nine, they were amazed at the beauty of the grand theater, pointing to heavy velvet curtains held back with gold ropes and the scrolling wood ornaments decorating the walls. Then they lifted their faces in wonder at the elaborately painted ceiling. The knot in Sandy’s stomach loosened until her eyes met Maddy’s. The fourteen-year-old’s face was set in a cold stare. It took all of Sandy’s strength to stand her ground and force a smile.

An usher finally led them to their seats where they once again sat in silence with only the occasional whisper from the little ones pointing out some new discovery. The house lights eventually dimmed and a hush fell over the audience. The first bars of music filled the room. The curtain rose, and the ballerinas took the stage.

Emily and Sarah were spellbound. Their eyes glued to the dancers—children twirled across the stage, tin soldiers came to life, and a sugar plum fairy enchanted them all. The glow in their eyes raised a lump in Sandy’s throat. She’d done the right thing. And as the saying went, two out of three wasn’t bad.

Emily and Sarah’s giggles and high-pitched chatter filled the car on the ride home, a warm contrast to the start of their journey. When they pulled into the driveway, the wind had died, leaving a peaceful blanket of snow across the yard and roof top. The younger girls clutched their shiny red nutcrackers and hugged Sandy goodbye. Again Maddy ushered them through the door as John and Sandy stood on the porch.

“Thank you for this. Their smiles…” His voice cracked; tears glistened in his eyes.

“You’re welcome.” He kissed her cheek then followed the girls inside. She was almost to the car when the screen door slammed behind her. She spun to find Maddy jogging down the steps.

“Sandy?” Her face was softer, her eyes wider, more innocent somehow.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.” Maddy gave a soft smile then ran back into the house.

Sandy stood beside her car letting the words of a child warm her. Today wasn’t a substitute, but it had been a welcome reprieve, and that was more than enough for her.

Original photo © 2009 sflovestory CC BY 2.0

Head down in the middle of her solid mahogany desk, eyelids blocking the mid-morning sun from the searing pain behind the bridge of her nose, the expanse of her office morphed into a loosely packed suburb of rich greens and blues. A month of late-night facts and figures melted into the insanity of random imagination. Her Starbucks dark-roast tasted like Kahlúa. The bottle of store-brand ibuprofen became a mailman in sexy shorts, delivering packages of happiness.

“We finally made it!” she bragged.

He wrapped strong hands around the back of her shoulders and her aching neck muscles, and firmly massaged. “Mmm,” she groaned, and stretched and relaxed her neck.

“I’ll pick up the kids and meet you at six?” he said.

She nodded, laid back on her mahogany deckchair, closed her eyes again, and sipped her Kahlúa. A long, deep sigh.

Then thunder boomed from the overcast sky.

“What the hell do I pay you for?!” The voice pierced through her brain.

“Ssh,” she mumbled to the intruder, with his doughnut gut, hulking shoulders, and close-cropped greying hair. “Inside voices, please, Bart.”

“Hey, you do the wine, you pay the time.” His voice remained as loud as before.

“I’m not hung over, and that doesn’t even make sense,” she said.

“Right!” The thunder felt like it was getting closer. “Look, I don’t care what you do on your own time, just don’t let it affect your work performance.”

Breathe deeply. Jackass. “What do you want, Bart?”

“We need to move Project Limerick up another month. I need an updated schedule by five this afternoon.” He smirked.

“Half my staff is out with the flu,” she said. “And I don’t even know what we can trim to do it a month faster.”

“We aren’t trimming anything. You’ll just have to rearrange the schedule and work faster.” He turned to leave.

“In what universe?” Pang! A burst of pain shot through her left eyeball, and she squinted.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t care what you do in your free time, but when it starts interfering with your job performance, I begin to get concerned. You can sleep at home, not at work, or you can find a job that doesn’t interfere so much with your personal life. Got it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m leaving at five, so get that schedule to me.” He slammed the door on his way out.

A tear appeared at the corner of her left eye. She sniffled.

When was the last time I had “free time”? Anger. She couldn’t remember.

Nausea tunneled through her torso.

When was the last time I had a personal life? She remembered the last boyfriend she had lost. He was nice. Not every man is a jackass.

That thought consumed her last bit of emotional energy.

Now on automatic, she walked through through the cubicle passageway toward the exit. Bart stood in an employee’s cube-office, and she took just enough time to shoot him a “Fuck you!” on her way past.

She slumbered for over 18 hours, and dreamed sweet dreams.

The next morning, over craigslist and coffee, the company CEO called her. He said most of the department had walked out the previous afternoon, inspired by her act of defiance. Her fault.

Then he said, “So Bart’s not with the company anymore. Can you take his job? At least for a little while?”

Photo © 2007 Randal Cooper CC BY-SA 2.0

Mark, timid little creature, he stammered through, asked me to “dinner or something, sometime.” I smiled and told him I’d love to, because he’s cute and sweet, and he plays a beautiful guitar. He’ll never dominate the top of the heap, but you always know where you stand with him, and you can trust him always to be faithful and to do the right thing. Mark, it turns out, is also a great kisser, which I knew he was going to be. And deeply passionate. Sigh.

Tony, on the other hand, he lives the life of the stereotypical alpha male. Six feet, 190 pounds, works out at the gym every day and benches 350. Top dog in his world, and he knows it. So when asked me to drinks, he already knew I’d say yes. You could see it in his eyes. He strolled by while I was halfway through my run on the treadmill, stopped for a minute and admired me— I wanted him to take me right then and there.

Then there’s Sean. Everyone else thinks he’s stuck up, but he makes me laugh. I stare through his glasses, and I can see mathematical formulas projected from his eye-lenses. And then he opens his mouth, and tries to explain them. He literally has no idea that no one can understand a thing he says. But he patiently answers—or tries to—every question I ask, explaining complex theorems in great detail. I’m no rocket scientist—though as Sean would quickly point out, this has nothing to do with rocket science. I could hardly care less how to find large prime numbers or whether the Goldbach Conjecture can be proved. Sean never asked me out. I asked him. And that meant I could ping him to see how he would react. Lots o’ fun! Like I said, he makes me laugh.

And then the three found out about each other.

Now, you’d think by now that I’d have a fair amount of experience with my lovers finding out about each other. And you would be wrong. Most of my boyfriends move on long before they see enough to suspect anything out of the ordinary, and I have become very good at appearing “too busy for a real relationship,” as one of those past boyfriends put it. That hurt, I’ll admit. But it’s better that he believe me a busy, high-powered executive, rather than a merely adventurous, high-powered executive—in other words, the truth.

Boyfriends quickly learn to expect not to see or talk to me at work. It’s better that way. The office is off-limits to personal issues. Sue, my assistant, has developed dodging into a fine art. More than once, she’s covered for my private life, because she thinks it’s strictly my own business what I do with it, and because she feels important when she’s indispensable, and probably because she enjoys having a little dirt on me, too. All told, we have an effective relationship.

Office. Home. The gym. The supermarket where I buy groceries. The bar I hang out at sometimes. My favorite coffee shop. Each is a separate world unto itself, and ne’er shall any of them overlap. That’s how I keep the compartments of my life separate, and organized. And it keeps me out of trouble.

So, you’re wondering now, how did this all blow up in my face? Well, it wasn’t anything I did, at least, and there was no way I could have prevented it. I mean, what are the chances that a starving artist, a jock, and an egghead would all accidentally meet each other?

Seriously, you’ll get a kick out of this.

It all started at a chocolate shop. Yes, a chocolate shop. It seems, Mark and Tony ran into each other both buying the same sports-car-shaped novelty sweets for Valentine’s Day, each for his own girlfriend, who drives a red Camaro. Apparently, that coincidence wasn’t bad enough; they had to start sharing— Who ever thought it? What guys “share” stories of their love lives with each other?

Of course, both quickly realized that they were dating the same woman. Tony threatened Mark, which was probably not the way to chase Mark away. I mean, just think about this for a moment: you don’t scare away a passionate artist by threatening him. Stupid idiots, the lot of them. As if that weren’t bad enough, Tony naturally obsessed over his suspicions, hired a private dick, who had no trouble discovering Sean.

The first I heard of any of this was when the lot of them barged into my office at work, all three of them together, despite Sue’s warnings that I was meeting with an important investor.

After summing up the situation, Tony ordered me to tell the other two to “jack off.” I felt a little flush and wanted to rip his shirt off, breathed deeply to calm my nerves. Mark apologized for the loss of his Valentine’s gift to me, but informed me that he was in love with me, and that threats meant nothing to him. I mean, I love him, too. But this is the exact situation I was trying to avoid. Sean looked like he was going to cry, but agreed that I should choose, and warned Tony that he had already contacted his lawyer.

Men are too much to handle sometimes.

Sue still stood in the doorway, panicked. I thanked her, so she wouldn’t have to witness any more of this travesty. Then I sat the other three down and explained to them in my most professional tone that each of them was special to me, and while I was sorry that they “found out this way,” they were being unfair in asking me to choose one over another. I told them I hadn’t lied to any of them, that really felt strongly about each of them, and that I wanted to continue to see all of them. I had heard of multilateral romances of that sort. Maybe it could work. I was going to find out.

“But if you really can’t handle that,” I admitted, “I guess it just can’t work out between us. I’m sorry.”

Whereupon all three of them stood and, without another word, walked out the door and left my life forever.

Good thing I have a liquor cabinet in my office.

Photo © 2010 rawryder CC BY-ND 2.0)

He smiled over his Sunday morning oatmeal, plain and steaming, his grapefruit cut into halves. Smiled with his eyes. Gotta remember, always with the eyes.

“That’s your problem,” pointing at his wife’s sausage and pancakes, drenched with syrup.

“And that’s yours!” She pointed back, at his grapefruit, her well-rounded face slinging condemnation.

“It wouldn’t hurt you to get up off your ass once in a while, either, and exercise.” He suddenly realized he was no longer smiling. Remember, always with the eyes.

He had read that people who smile with their eyes live longer. Seriously. Researchers at Wayne State University in Michigan studied photographs of baseball players from the 1950′s. Those who were smiling with their eyes in the photos lived an average of 7 years longer than those who were not smiling at all.

A week later, he eyed her toast, golden brown and delicious. Of its own accord, his hand reached out and snarfed a slice.

“Be careful,” she said. “That has butter on it!”

He knew she was mocking him, but he couldn’t help but chuckle. He stopped, staring at it, debating whether to put it down or to put it in his mouth.

“You’re too much!” She interrupted his thoughts.

He focused on her headlight-blue eyes, which were beaming astonishment at him. He grinned at her and shoved the dripping shingle into his mouth, chewed and swallowed.

Gack! He choked. “I think I’m going to be sick!”

The following month, she slept poorly. He made her breakfast, between shudders of disgust, just the way she liked it. He brought her a tray in bed. Then he leaned over and kissed her tenderly on the lips.

“What’s that for?” Surprise.

“What’s what for?” he asked.

She motioned at the tray. “Breakfast,” she said. “And you haven’t kissed me like that in… forever.”

“What? I can’t kiss my own wife?!”

A pause.

He stared at the tray of what might be loosely termed food, grinned sardonicism. “I still don’t know how you can eat that.”

“See!?” As if to prove her point. “That’s what I’m talking about. You can kiss my fat ass!”

His face fell. “I just want you stick around. Because I’ll miss you when you die.”

After a year, they were carving smiles on each others’ whole-wheat bagels and feeding each other bites of egg-white omelet with onion and green pepper.

Sundays passed. The weekend of his big promotion at work. The months after the big layoff. The war. The great blizzard and other winters. Lazy weekends reclining under the summer sunrise. The colors of the autumns, the freshnesses of springtime.

She sat shiva with their daughter and sons, friends and family, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Onto a bagel slice, she carved two eyes and a grin.

“I already miss his smile,” her daughter’s voice said sadly.

Crows’ feet around her eyes, the old woman hugged and kissed her little girl. “I know. But it’s still here,”—resting her palm on the younger woman’s heart—”and will never die.”

Quiet, pretty, young, she rarely smiles, even when serving customers their coffee and muffins. Each morning, I make it a point to grin long and broad, with “please” and “thanks.” But in return I rarely receive more than a rote, “Café Americano, two sixty-five.”

Then, at about 10 o’clock, she takes a break, to sit and stare. The sun peeks around the edge of a cloud overhead, now gleaming through her tender blue eyes and warming her luxurious, dark hair. Her face softens, and my heart melts, and I wonder what she thinks about.

At that moment, she raises her hand to her chin, and the sleeve of her black uniform slides down enough to reveal pieces of blue and red scribbled into her arm.

“What’s your tattoo?” I ask.

I myself have never mustered the will and courage to subject myself to the tattooist’s needle.

A frown etches its way across her face. “Nothing,” she mutters, her eyes still transfixed on the outside scene.

I shrug my eyebrows, as if to shrug off the hurt I feel. I return to the joyful fantasy of my book– Or rather, I am just about to return to it, when the girl silently unbuttons her sleeve, rolls it up, holds out her wrist, revealing a half a butterfly, its intricate wings painted in dazzling blue. The half-butterfly sits on the stem of a rose blossom, deep green and red.

“Wow,” I say. “That’s really beautiful.” Then, “Why only half a butterfly?”

“The other half– flew away,” she says, returns to her window view, her frown now more pronounced than ever.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Not your fault,” she mumbles.

I try pull my eyes from hers. And fail.

I imagine her smiling, laughing, bonding with friends, close to her loved ones. Her desolate sadness stabs through my gut.

I could argue with her. True, it’s not my fault that her best friend died, or moved away, or whatever happened. But I can still feel sorry. I’m allowed to feel sorry, not just with pity, but out of human kindness. In some societies, the community would rally around, sit, mourn with her. How can I sit here next to her and feel nothing? Or worse, feel only discomfort and dread, wanting only to escape from her presence, back into the safety of my novel.

But arguing with would accomplish nothing.

She sees me staring, I’m sure. If I were she, if our positions were reversed, I’d notice her staring. I’d wonder what kind of kook she was. I’d worry what kind of mess I’d gotten myself into.

“I hope,” I squeak– I swallow. “I hope that you can hang out with some friends after your shift, at least.”

She grunts.

“I wish there were something I could do,” I admit.

She glares at me. “Well, there isn’t. Haley was the only real friend I had. And now she’s gone. She was the only one who knew how to love everyone as they were. There will never be another person like her, ever. So don’t even try!”

She runs to the ladies room, and I can feel numerous pairs of eyes throwing glances in our direction.

I gulp down the rest of my now-tepid coffee, place the cup and saucer in the dish-return. Carrying my book, I stroll toward the exit, already having decided to return tomorrow morning to see how she’s getting along.

I’m staring at her animated features from across a half-eaten slab of flounder and a mostly-empty glass of Chardonnay. She drones on. Still pretty as when I first met her, but I wonder if I were to choke on an errant bone if it would give me an excuse…

No such luck.

You wouldn’t think it possible that any one person could know this much about Magnum, P.I. Much to my surprise, you would be wrong. I bet she could recite every word of the script of every episode by heart. Apparently, she maintains her own very complete “Nitpicker’s Guide to Magnum, P.I.” site on the web. I say “apparently,” because I haven’t seen it myself. Probably only two or three people in the universe have. I chuckle at the thought. I guess the chuckle is well-timed, because she doesn’t seem offended.

Rather, she nods enthusiastically. “Really!” Her eyebrows shoot up, eyes wide. “No kidding!”

“But what bugs me most,” she says, “is how he always lets people walk all over him.”

I’m not as expert as she is, but I recall Magnum as a hard-boiled, Vietnam vet, an ’80′s TV private-eye, fearless and shrewd, the sort of guy who could whoop ass in a bar-fight but knows better than to get into one. Don’t let any of that give pause to her tirade. I guess the good-looking, sensitive, Hawaiian-surf image works even in the 21′st century.

Or maybe it’s Tom Selleck’s mustache. He’s wearing a goatee nowadays, isn’t he? I reach up and stroke my fingers around my own mustache and goatee, wondering whether it has anything to do with why she’s on a date with me.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Don’t you think that he would have been less interesting a character, if they had written him without those faults?”

She stares at me, puzzled, as if I had just proposed that water was a dry liquid. “I suppose you’re right,” she says. “That certainly wouldn’t feel right.” Her face falls.

Oh yeah. A dream date. Or a nightmare. And stuck in it for another hour, because of the Chardonnay.

We eat in silence for several minutes, listening to the din of conversations we aren’t having, interrupted by the occasional clatter of a glass or plate from a dinner we aren’t enjoying. I happen to glance across the table. Her head hangs low; a clump of her hair is painting tiny, abstract lines onto her green beans. I smile without thinking. Something about her endears her to me. Sometimes we don’t understand why we fall for the ones we love.

“Jeanette?” I say.

She lifts her head. “Yeah?”

I reach across the table and push the wayward strands behind her shoulder. “Will you share my favorite dessert with me, if I share your favorite episode with you?”

Something tells me she has them all on DVD.

Photo © 2007 Rachel Cobcroft CC 2.0 BY NC SA

“We’re both dead,” he says, “long dead. But that doesn’t mean we can’t grow alive again!”

She can hardly believe what she’s hearing, of course. A fellow zombie, wanting to be human? Aspiring to be like them? If she didn’t know any better, she would think he was still one of them. But his pallor, his fetor, his unkempt appearance, his bulging eyes, his expressionless countenance, even the moan in his voice, all point to the sophistication that characterize their kind.

How? she wonders, Again human? One cannot undo death, cannot un-lose one’s innocence.

“No,” she says. “They want. We good.”

He shakes his head at her. “You have it all wrong. They don’t strive to be like us, and we don’t fulfill their wishes. They just want to be accepted, to be included.”

“We give them!” she shoots back.

“We give them neither acceptance nor inclusion. Don’t you see? We are the ones who have lost our souls.”

He presses on, and she hears his voice quickening, and wonders how he can talk so fast. “We tell ourselves that we’re better than them, but we only believe it because we hear it all the time. We don’t hold their answers; they hold ours.”

She stares at him a moment, processing his words, almost too much for her. He’s wrong. He’s sacrificing everything she’s worked for, everything she is. She considers destroying him, like the humans sometimes do. Has a zombie ever destroyed one of his own kind?

“You used to be human,” he says. “Have you forgotten already? Don’t you remember what it was like to think, to feel, what it was like to live? What it was like to love?”

She wonders: is that why he’s doing this, betraying their kind, out of some misguided love? Indeed, love was a powerful emotion.

He reaches his hand out and caresses her face. “I remember how you used to be filled with life, how you used to smile at me. How long has it been since we smiled?” And the corner of his lip inches up, stiffly, just a little.

Clearly he is not a full zombie. He is still somehow part human. “You, human,” she says, and she moves to grab him, to attack him as she would a human.

But he does not try to escape. Instead he says, “You can no longer hurt me, my sweet. You can no longer destroy me. I have journeyed to death, and I am on my way back. I’ve met those who have returned to life, and they’ve shown me the way. It all starts up here,”—he points at his head—”in the mind, and here,”—he puts his hand to his chest—”in the heart. None of us has really lost the ability to live; we’ve just forgotten how. All you need to do is to accept it.”

He gazes longingly into her eyes, a stare she just barely remembers. She used to be human, an existence she shed a lifetime ago, an existence that embarrasses her, that she wishes she could forget. His gaze bores into her long-forgotten soul, and she wants to lash out at him, to destroy him. But she also longs for it, for his affection.

She takes his hand in hers and brings it to her lips. She has forgotten how to kiss, but the feeling of his skin against hers reminds of all she has forgotten. She looks to him for a reaction.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You’re allowed to feel. You’re allowed to live. Don’t ever let them tell you otherwise, never again. Join us, and I’ll show you how.”

She never imagined that this would be the defining moment of her life.

Born Abigail Little, she had grown up with platinum blonde hair and deep brown eyes. As a teenager, she obsessed about her appearance and social behavior. She was smart and pretty, funny and good-natured. She was the girl every boy wanted to kiss and every other girl wanted to be.

As an adult, she married and mothered. Crow’s feet etched their way around her eyes, and though still potentially attractive, looks mattered progressively less to her. She bought nice clothes for her children; sweats and sneakers for herself. Her hair became frizzy and wiry. She put all her energy into her family, all her time into her home.

When the kids were old enough for school, she took a job as groundskeeper at a local amusement park. She was always cleaning up someone else’s mess, but she didn’t mind. In fact, it was an honor, for she knew the story of the broken window. It has been said a building can be vacant for years without becoming dilapidated, until even a single window gets broken; and then the whole building will become uninhabitable within days. Abigail knew that just one piece of trash, and her entire world would begin to disintegrate.

It was this passion she threw into her work. As a result, she was late one day. She was late picking up the kids from their after-school program. She got bawled out. Actually, the woman was very nice to this overworked mother. But Abigail couldn’t see it any other way. She had failed her duty.

It was then she realized, she was being controlled by circumstances. She had lost the excitement, her passion for life, her passion for her own life. She lived for everyone else, where she had once lived for herself.

The next day, she blew off work. She got in the car and drove across the state. Then she walked into the First Bank of Everytown, U.S.A., she walked up to a teller, pulled out her gun, and demanded they fill the satchel with cash.

Photo © 2006 HD41117 CC 2.0 BY NC SA

Her great claim to fame was that she failed Freshman English Lit. Twice.

How is it even possible to fail English Lit? Think about it. This is a course that has no real requirements, save that you show up and say something. Yes, you’re supposed to read the novel that everyone else is also reading. But lesser students had squeaked by on the Cliff Notes, or even outright faking it.

Even so, she managed to fail English Lit. Twice. And so ended her college career.

She promptly moved back in with her parents. She discussed the situation with them only in sketches. Her father asked her what she was going to do now. She replied that she didn’t know, which was the truth. He quietly accepted her answer. He didn’t seem upset. He seemed a little worried.

She took a service-industry job at a local ice-cream-and-coffee place, promptly proving her klutziness. She was constantly getting ice-cream flavors mixed up, or putting half-and-half in a customer’s coffee instead of milk. When her boss asked her to wipe down the counter, she promptly sprayed cleaning fluid all over the lemon sorbet. This made him none too happy and earned her a sharp rebuke. She couldn’t even pour a fruit smoothy without fucking it up— spilled it all over the floor.

As she is returning from the back with a mop and pail, the last customer of the morning rush walks out. The place is empty except for Dawn, her coworker, who says, “Don’t worry about him. He’s an ass.”

“Who?”

“Samson.” That’s her boss.

“He gives everyone a hard time,” Dawn says. “I think he’s trying to compensate for other inadequacies.” Dawn makes a humping motion with her hips.

The girl turns her attention to the puddle of strawberry-red liquid with melting chunks on the floor and begins to sop up what she can with the mop.

Dawn continues. “He even once scolded Tom… the owner. Have you met him?”

The girl shakes her head, no.

“Big guy, dark hair… Anyhow, you’ll meet him eventually. Pretty easy going. You’ll like him. Anyhow, Samson chews him out, right in front of a customer.” Takes a moment to grin. “I’ve never seen Tom’s face turn that color before. He takes Samson into the back for a private chat. That was actually kinda fun.”

A pause, with the slurp of the mop occasionally interrupting the adult-contemporary playing in the background.

“Has he made a pass at you yet?” Dawn asks.

No, he hasn’t. She’s not even worthy enough to be sexually harassed.

“My first day here, he pinches my ass and starts flicking his tongue at me. Says it’s a demonstration of his ah-bil-ah-TAYz.”

Dawn so flawlessly imitates Samson’s inflection, when he’s trying to sound cool, that the girl can’t help but giggle. She stops her mopping for a moment and turns to Dawn. Soberly, “Did you report him?”

“No. I actually kind of like holding it over him.” Then Dawn changes her tone. “But don’t let that stop you. If you want to get him, I’ll stick up for you.” There’s just a drop of vitriol in her voice.

No, the girl shakes her head. “He hasn’t done anything to me.” Sadly.

A pause.

“He’s probably intimidated by you,” Dawn says. “You’re too good looking, out of his league. He’s probably afraid your family has an army of lawyers or something. I wouldn’t mind that,” without missing a beat, “seeing him taken down a few pegs. I don’t even know why Tom keeps him around. He does drugs, doesn’t work. He’s probably out back toking up right now.” Stares at the ceiling, thoughtful. “Don’t think he’s related. Tom must owe his family or something.”

The girl laughs. Something about the way Dawn said it must have struck her funny. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to laugh.”

“No, that’s okay,” Dawn says. “You gotta maintain your sense of humor around here.” Dawn is smiling.

“Actually, the job isn’t that bad. It’s just Samson, that’s all. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea. I didn’t mean to unload on you.”

“What’s so wrong about that?” the girl asks.

A customer arrives. But before serving him, Dawn says, “Would you like to grab a bite after work?” Then almost as an afterthought, she adds, “You know, you’d make a good shrink.”

Photo © 2008 Paul Falardeau CC 2.0 BY ND

This story is a test.

Seriously, it’s a test to see whether I can magically change the future. Really.

I know you don’t believe me, but let me explain. For the past three weeks, I’ve been dreaming the future. Actually, it’s been 20 days. Today will be day 21.

It may have been going on for longer, but I first noticed it on May 21. Actually, at first, I thought it was just a coincidence. It wasn’t until a few days later that I began to suspect something… paranormal. (Yeah, that’s the word I want, paranormal. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the only word that fits.)

On Friday, May 21, a friend of mine was telling me what happened to him that morning on the way to work. He had almost gotten into a 5-car accident. (He would have been in car number 6.) And as he was telling the story, I remembered I had dreamed the night before about the same thing, an almost-accident.

In my dream, an old work colleague, who I haven’t seen in years, was driving a motorcycle down I-95, and suddenly a truck ran over her. I freaked, of course, but then she got up and assured me that she and her bike were okay. It had been a near miss.

Crazy coincidence, I thought, and I told my friend about the dream I’d had. We all had a good laugh over it and didn’t think any more of it.

That night, I dreamed a man with bloody feet was pushing boulders off a high hill, sending them barreling over the city of Philadelphia. Each boulder was larger than the previous, striking the city with ever more force, time and again and again and again. Finally, he reached the last boulder, and he told me not to worry, that this was the last one.

“What’s that been, five?” I said. “Why not ten? Why not twenty?”

“Five is enough,” he replied, grinning.

The next day, the Red Sox shut out the Phillies, 5 to nothing.

I began writing down my dreams, all of them that I could remember, every night. Then each day, I scoured Google news to see if my dreams had come true. Over and over again, I found that they had.

• The Alaskan pipeline spill (May 25)
• Obama’s targeting of US citizens as terrorists (May 27)
• The protest march in Phoenix against the Arizona immigration law (May 29)
• The phonetic-spelling protesters at the Scripps National Spelling Bee (June 4)
• The tornado in Illinois (June 5)
• The 4-alarm fire in Henderson, Nevada (June 8)
• The 429 people arrested in a national drug raid (June 9)
• The beached whale on Jones Beach Island (June 10)

So I figured I’d try an experiment. I read up on lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is when you wake up while you’re dreaming, just enough to know that you are in fact dreaming. And at that point you can affect what happens in your dream. You can do anything you want; after all, it is your dream. I even tried it a few times, just so that I knew I could dream lucidly. But I was careful not to affect anything in my dream. I just wanted to see if I could do it.

All the while, I continued to test that I was still dreaming the future, and indeed, I was. In fact, when I dreamed about the beached whale, which in my dream, appeared as a beaver caught in a trap, I saw the people coming to take it away. And dreaming lucidly, even though I felt helpless to stop them, I considered pulling out a machine gun (because after all, it was my dream, and I could do anything I wanted in it) and mowing them all down. But then I reconsidered, remembering that I wasn’t ready yet to progress to the next stage of this experiment. And I let them take the beaver away. I’m glad I restrained myself, because if I hadn’t, who knows what would have happened to those people in real life, the ones with the sad task of disposing of the dead whale?

But now I’m ready to futz with the future. In fact, I already have. Last night, I created my own dream, carefully designed, nothing dangerous, but specific enough that I can tell whether or not the experiment worked. I dreamed a man who had inherited a million dollars, and he walked up to a lady sitting on a park bench with her young son nearby. And he whipped out a thousand-dollar bill and gave it to her, just like that.

Remember, the actual meaning of the dream is symbolic, because the dream is a metaphor. But I take it to mean that something extraordinarily good will have happened to someone, and he (or she) will share part of his good fortune with those around him.

So now, I ask you whether anything like that happened to you, or around you. If so, you’ll have confirmed the theory that I indeed can change the future through lucid dreaming.

C’mon. Someone. At least one of you must have had a stroke of good fortune today.

Author’s Note: This story is also a test of something else, a storytelling principle. There’s something slightly off about it. Or at least according to conventional wisdom, there’s something wrong with it. Can you tell what? -TimK