Thirty Minute Guarantee Barrett O’Donnell Published by Barrett O’Donnell at Smashwords Copyright 2012 Barrett O’Donnell Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com. Thank you for your support. Thirty Minute Guarantee Cover art by Barrett O’Donnell Published by Barrett O’Donnell at Smashwords Copyright 2012 Barrett O’Donnell If you had met Eric Hayes a year ago, you would have been introduced to a very average looking twenty-four year old man who didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He had been ordinary since birth. As a kid he played street hockey with other kids on the block or rode his bike to a friend’s house to hang out. In high school he would go to Como Park when he skipped school to go bridge jumping and go swimming. Sometimes they would even cook up some hotdogs on one of the grills in the park, washing them down with beer they had stolen from one of their parents. After high school, which he barely graduated, he thought about going to college but decided to take some time off, save up some money and do some traveling. At twenty-four, he was still taking that time off and the only traveling he had done was up to Canada to see the Canadian ballet. Now he slept during the day and worked at night as a delivery boy for the only pizzeria that still had a thirty minute guarantee. His car was a beat up Plymouth that he and his father had split the cost of when he was sixteen. They made an agreement that whatever money Eric could save up in one summer cutting grass his father would match dollar for dollar. His father was very surprised to find that he had actually saved up more than half of what he would need to buy a car. Eric didn’t have much of a life. After work he would go out with his friends to their favorite bar to throw darts and shoot pool, or go home and play video games all night by himself drinking energy drinks and eating potato chips. He didn’t have a girlfriend, no pets, just him. His family had all moved away, for one reason or another, but he couldn’t bring himself to go with them. His parents had argued with him over this several times, trying to get him to move with them but their arguments were useless. He was adamant about staying. He liked it here. Loved it really. He loved the quiet, the convenience of everything. Just about anything he would need was within walking distance and everything else was no more than a twenty minute drive away, even if he hit every red light on the way. After they had left, his family still tried to get him to leave, telling him he would be better off living closer to them and that things were just going to get worse for him there. Now, with hindsight being what it was, he thought he should have left with the rest of his family. It was shortly after he found a small apartment above a cigar shop on Broadway in the village and his family had moved away that he had the encounter that would change the rest of his life, maybe even be the end of it. He received a gift from a stranger, or what he thought was a gift at first, but eventually realized it was something he wished he had never received. In the end, if someone asked him how he felt about what he was given, the only way he could think to describe it was, “It’s worse than any nightmare you can possibly think of. There is no one word to describe it. Think of all the things that scare you. No, better yet, think of all the things that terrify you, make you sad, make you angry, put them all in one experience. That’s close but you’re still not quite there.” It was the day after Thanksgiving. The snow had started falling early that year, laying a smooth white blanket over the ground. Eric thought the trees looked like they had come out of a Bob Ross painting that he had seen on PBS as a kid, with their “happy snow covered branches”. The town had cleared the roads and put down enough salt to keep them from freezing over. He was on his last delivery of the night, driving out to the edge of town to deliver a large pepperoni and a double order of Buffalo wings when he almost ran over the old man. Out away from the village the streetlights became fewer and farther between than they are in the middle of town, and the roads rise and fall like the waters of Lake Erie on a windy day. There was no need for him to speed, it was a slow night, no one else was on the road. It was the biggest shopping day of the year and everyone was still out shopping. He would make his delivery well within the pizzeria’s thirty-minute guarantee. When he came over one of the rolling hills of rural Lancaster he saw the ghostly white face of an old man in his headlights. Eric slammed on the brakes and turned the steering wheel hard to the left then even harder back to the right. The brakes engaged and the tires squealed as the car swerved around the pale figure. Eric stopped the car on the shoulder of the road. His heart racing, hands white knuckled on the steering wheel, his feet pressed so hard on the break pedal and floor of the car his toes began to go numb. He sat there a moment, wide-eyed, trying to convince his lungs to start breathing again. Hesitant to take even one hand off the steering wheel, afraid he might have to quickly maneuver the car again, he put the car in park and pulled the emergency brake lever up. His knuckles ached and popped from the use. His other hand loosened as he leaned his forehead on the wheel, closed his eyes and exhaled. A wave of lightheadedness washed over him while stars danced behind his eyelids. He took his foot off the brake pedal and relaxed his legs, the car rocked gently and settled. He could feel the blood rush back into his feet as the pins and needles feeling came into his toes. He let it pass while his head stopped spinning and he caught his breath. “Fuck.” He sighed. Once his legs felt like they would be able to keep him vertical, Eric turned off the engine and got out of the car leaving the lights on. He turned to look for the old man but didn’t see him anywhere. He knew he hadn’t hit him. There wasn’t the loud thump associated with a body being struck by a car, not that he had ever hit someone before, he only assumed the movies had the sound right. Eric looked to the sides of the road for any sign of the old man but found nothing. Still out of breath and his heart still pounding faster than it really should have been, he turned to walk back to his car. As he turned he found himself face to face with the old man. He had came up behind him, arms out stretched as though he was reaching for his throat. Eric had just enough time to recognize the face before the old man was on him, his thin wiry frame clothed in nothing but a brown terrycloth bathrobe that flapped open revealing his blue boxers and yellow stained undershirt. He reached out with both hands and grabbed the sides of Eric’s head. Eric grabbed at the old man’s arms trying to free himself, but his hands held. The old man’s grip was stronger than he expected. His fingertips felt like they were burrowing under his scalp trying to penetrate his skull and poke him in the brain. The old man began to mumble as they struggled, all the words seemed to come out as one. In the commotion, the only words Eric could make out were “bequeath”, “see the unknown” and “keep it safe”. Eric’s body became rigid and his eyes rolled back in his head. An enormous pressure pushed from within his head, like his brain had grown three times its normal size. His eyes seemed to push forward in their sockets, on the verge of popping out and dangling on his chest. The old man released his head and Eric collapsed to the ground, the pressure fading, and his eyes settling back in their proper place. He remained still; lying on the asphalt in the middle of a poorly lit rural road with his eyes clenched shut. Later, he would recall thinking he was going to die here. Not because the old man was going to kill him while he lay there but because someone else on this road ordered a pizza for delivery. When he finally opened his eyes and stood up he found it had started snowing again, his coat had a light dusting of the white stuff on it. The old man was gone. He looked around for him but he didn’t see him anywhere. No crazed, half naked old man running down the street with his bathrobe flapping in the snow behind him. The only sign that he had ever been there was a brown terrycloth bathrobe belt lying at his feet like a dead snake. Eric returned to his car, started it up and turned on his windshield wipers to clear the droplets of melted snow from his field of view. He made his final delivery of the night but had to pay for it from his tips because the old man had taken enough of his time for him to miss the thirty-minute guarantee. But that was only the beginning of what the old man would cost him. Eric finished his delivery shift at eleven o’clock and decided he needed a drink. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone to give his friend Bill a call. As his fingers wrapped around the hard plastic casing of his phone, a feeling like nothing he had ever felt hit him. It felt like someone had taken off the top of his head and was using a blow-dryer with the heat turned to high on his brain. His vision blurred for a moment then focused again. Only it didn’t focus on what was actually in front of him. It focused on what looked like the Lake Side Pub. He could see Bill and Chad sitting at the bar talking to Lauren the bartender. She had just set down two pints of beer in front of them. Then he saw himself step into view and the others looked to acknowledge him. He saw all this as though he was watching a movie being projected in front of him, only it wasn’t projected on to a screen. It was more like it was projected on a thin layer of fog cast over his eyes. He shook his head, clearing the vision from his head, his eyes focusing on the world around him again, and finished retrieving his phone from his pocket and called Bill. He answered after three rings. “Hey, what’s up Eric?” Said Bill answering the phone. “Not much. Rough day at work. You wanna go out for beer?” Eric asked knowing the answer. “Chad and I are already at the Lake Side. Come on down, we’ll be here for a while.” “Okay, I’ll be there in a bit.” “Cool. See ya soon.” Bill said before hanging up. On his way to the Lake Side Pub, Eric stopped by his apartment to change and grab a bite to eat that wasn’t pizza, or anything else that they made at work. As he was changing he glanced at the clock and saw that it was quarter past eleven. The heat bloomed up inside his head again, his vision blurred and the fog fell over his eyes. Again he saw inside the Lake Side Pub only this time he didn’t see his friends or himself. He saw a guy get up from the bar and walk over to another guy sitting at a table and punch him in the face. The heat subsided and his vision returned to normal with the force of the blow delivered by the man in his “movie” causing Eric to step backward and bump into his dresser. He shook his head and looked around his bedroom. Everything was the way it was supposed to be, no fog, no double exposed site. “What the hell is happening to me?” He asked the empty room as he put on his coat and left. When he arrived at the bar at half past eleven everything was exactly as he saw it in his first vision. He was walking up to the bar and saw Chad and Bill sitting there talking to Lauren as she put a pint down in front of each of them. All three of them turned and looked at him as he walked up. A shiver ran down Eric’s spine at the déjà vu he was experiencing. Lauren poured another pint for him and slid it over as he sat down next to Bill. “Can I get a shot too?” He asked as he grabbed the pint and drank down half of it in one pull. Lauren raised her eyebrows and gave him a smile. “Rough day?” she said as she poured him a shot of his brand of whiskey. “You could say that.” Was all he said back in reply. “Dude, what’s the matter with you tonight? How bad could your day have been?” asked Bill. Lauren put the shot down in front of Eric and turned to another customer further down the bar. The whiskey in the shot glass didn’t even have time to settle before Eric picked it up and threw it back. Slamming the glass on the bar he turned to Bill and Chad and said. “I almost ran someone over tonight.” “Oh shit!” exclaimed Chad. “When?” Bill just stared at him slack jawed. “About an hour ago. When I was on my last delivery. Fucking made me late for the delivery too. I had to pay for it myself.” Said Eric taking another pull from his pint before telling them the story of his encounter with the old man, about swerving to miss him and how the guy attacked him then disappeared leaving behind the belt of his bathrobe. The door to the bar opened just as he finished telling his tale and the guy he saw in his second vision came walking in. The guy walked up to the bar and ordered a beer. Eric couldn’t help but stare at the guy, he couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Everything he had seen earlier was happening for real. The newcomer to the bar must have felt Eric’s eyes on him because he looked him right in the eyes and said, “What’s your problem?” The mans words made Eric flinch. “Nothing, sorry.” Was all he could manage to say and turned away from the man back to his friends. He chanced another glance over at the man and saw him sitting there brooding over his beer, he was working his fingers like he was trying to loosen up the knuckles, getting ready for a fight. Eric scanned the rest of the bar looking for the unlucky guy that was going to get punched in the face. He didn’t see him. There were four tables in the bar and three of them were occupied by people other than the human punching bag. Giving the room one more quick sweep, his eyes stopped on the door as it opened again and the second guy walked in and went straight to the empty table. “No shit!” Eric said out loud. “What?” asked Bill. “There’s going to be a fight.” “What? How do you know?” said Bill laughing. He liked to see a good fight whenever he could as long as he wasn’t involved. He was known for instigating fights between other people on occasion. “I just know. I can’t explain it but I know there is going to be a fight and I know who’s going to start it.” Eric leaned closer to Bill and Chad and whispered, “The guy sitting at the bar that came in a couple minutes ago is going to get up and walk over to the guy sitting by himself at that table and just haul off and punch him. He’s gonna knock him the fuck out too.” “Bull shit!” Said Chad and Bill together. “I swear it. He’s just gonna get up, walk over there and punch him in the face. I don’t know why but he’s gonna.” Said Eric. “Okay. Say your right. How do you ‘just know’ this? You gotta give us more than that.” Said Bill. “Fine. You probably still wont believe me when I’m done telling you.” Eric paused for a moment before telling them about what he thought were headaches. “In the last hour or so I’ve been getting these weird headaches. Well, actually only two so far, but every time I get one my eyes get fuzzy and I see things.” Eric paused again to look at his friends trying to get an idea of what they were thinking right now. They showed nothing, just stared at him so he went on. “The first time was just before I called you.” He looked at Bill. “I saw the two of you sitting right here at the bar talking to Lauren, then I came in.” “We always sit right here and we always talk to Lauren.” Said Bill. “That doesn’t mean anything.” “It’s not just that.” Said Eric. “It’s the little things, the details. It was the way all of you looked up when I walked in, the way Lauren set the beers down and the expressions on your faces. It was like it had all happened about a half hour earlier. It’s the same with those two guys. I saw it happen and now they are both here sitting in the exact same places that I saw them.” Chad laughed. “Okay. Whatever dude. It’s just déjà vu.” Bill looked at Eric. “Seriously dude, you must have had a really bad day at work.” “You know what? Fuck the both of you. You’ll see. Any minute now that guy is gonna knock the shit outta the guy at the table.” Said Eric finishing his beer. Eric flagged down Lauren for another beer. Just as she set down the fresh pint in front of Eric the guy at the bar chugged what he had left in his bottle of beer, stood up and walked across the bar to the guy sitting by himself at the table and without saying a word gave him a right cross knocking the guy out of his chair and sprawling him across the floor. He laid on the floor unmoving except for his twitching feet. The attacker calmly turned and left the bar as people moved to look after the unlucky guy lying in a puddle of his own blood and drool. Once the guy was upright and conscious again Lauren called the cops for him. He gave his statement while the two people from the volunteer ambulance corps tended to his busted nose. In a town as small as the Village of Lancaster anytime there is any kind of emergency just about every emergency vehicle in the town responds. By the time the police got around to questioning Eric and his friends they had pretty much figured out that the guy everyone had described had done it and only asked them if their story was the same. They all said yes. Over the next several weeks Eric’s friends began to notice that he really had acquired a talent for knowing what was going to happen shortly before it did. They would be watching a game on television and he would predict the final score exactly and tell them what the last play would be. Before they left to go to the casino one night he suggested that they take a different route than they normally would because there would be an accident on the 190 Interstate that would stop traffic dead for hours. They were listening to the radio on their way when the DJ informed his listeners that a tractor-trailer had overturned shutting down all lanes of traffic on the 190 and that drivers should seek an alternate route. Later that night he had to tell his friends it was time to leave the casino, the pit boss was going to be coming down with security to talk to them because they were winning too much. The guys had figured out that if Eric could see the numbers on roulette that would come up in a half hour they could play those numbers and win big. Chad had warned Bill to keep his bets reasonable so as not to draw too much attention. Bill made it about five minutes before he broke down and started betting heavy, drawing the attention of the eye in the sky. Even after Eric’s warning about security Bill wanted to keep going but Chad was able to pull him away. Security followed them all the way out of the casino and to their car just to make sure they left. By Spring time his friends would jokingly say it was Eric’s thirty-minute guarantee and Eric couldn’t argue with that description. What he saw was guaranteed to happen. He couldn’t tell you what would happen tomorrow or the day after, or even an hour from now. But as soon as it hit the thirty-minute mark, he knew. He wished they wouldn’t tell everyone which of course they did and they took full advantage of his gift making ridiculous bar bets and try to pick up women, never thinking of the consequences of what they were doing. Eric’s visions increased in frequency and intensity over time. The warm heat running over his brain had changed to more of a fiery burn and the visions that he saw would last for minutes instead of seconds. He could feel a pressure behind his eyes similar to the one he felt on that wintry night with the old man as he watched the future, projected over what he was seeing live and they would water when he tried to focus on either the now or the then. Not just one tear rolling down his face but a full on cry. There was no emotion in the tears, only discomfort. No matter how much he tried to stop them the tears kept coming. By the time summer had come back around word had spread around town of the guy that could tell the future, and some people had managed to get his address. People from town he had never even met started knocking on his door asking him to use his gift for them. They wanted him to tell them what the lottery numbers would be or what horses would win at the track. Word had even started to spread outside of Lancaster. People were coming from all over the place to ask him what he could see in their future. The sick would ask if they were going to live. The healthy would ask when they were going to die. The Poor wanted to be rich and the rich wanted to be richer. Every time he tried to explain that his ability was limited to only thirty minutes from now the people that wanted to use him would say things like “hack”, “fraud”, and “useless”, and those names were almost always prefaced with the word “fucking”. It wasn’t just the greedy that would curse him, it was everyone. He had an old lady come up to him at the grocery store while he was picking up a pack of toilet paper ask him if he could get a message to her husband who had been dead for fifteen years. “I’m sorry ma’am, but that’s not what I can do.” He said forcing a pleasant enough smile considering that this woman was the twelfth person that day to ask him to use his gift. “I can’t speak to the dead. I can see what’s going to happen about thirty minutes from now.” The old woman straightened up and frowned, “Well what good is that?” The old lady turned away from him and muttered, “fucking pathetic.” That the first of many that Eric stayed home, away from the general public because he was tired of the ridicule. The world seemed to have turned on him. He used to think it was mostly good, that the mean and self-centered were fewer than the ones that were kind and caring. But now he felt the world was greedy and selfish. Everyone wanting something only for themselves, not caring what happened to others. He no longer wanted to be a part of it. When October came he received phone calls from the Lancaster Town Supervisor asking to know how the Town Board would vote on the proposed budget for the next year. A half hour before the vote he looked into the future, the burning now more of a fire and the pressure that pushed against the back of his eyes more intense than ever and the tears had been replaced with blood. He struggled through the pain as he always did with a hope that the out come would be good. The police would look to him to help solve crimes or prevent them all together. He helped in anyway he could, thinking he could use his ability to help save lives. Every time the film played in his vision the pain increased, his body became week. His face was becoming worn and pail. He was only twenty-four but he looked like he had aged ten years over the past several months. It had gotten to the point that he couldn’t leave his apartment at all. Not only because of all the questions he would be bombarded with but also the sheer number of people camped outside his building. People from all over the state had started coming to him looking for answers to questions he could not answer. At least not yet. Some of the people would be patient and wait, going as far as camping out in front of the door to his apartment building. The landlord was considering evicting him because of the nuisance these people were causing for the other tenants. The last time his friends asked him if he wanted to go out was on his twenty-fifth birthday. They tried to throw him a surprise party thinking they could outsmart his ability. They were wrong. Eric tried to act surprised when he got to the bar but everyone could tell that he knew they were throwing him a party well before he arrived with a group of people that had been camping outside his house in tow. Even Chad and Bill refused to talk to him that night. Around the same time his friends abandoned him his family started pulling away as well. His parents called to see how he was doing less frequently. In the few conversations he did have with his parents they were talking about how people near them were starting to talk about a man that lived up north that could see into the future. Some of the people heard rumors of his name and would ask his parents if they were any relation. They tried to avoid the subject as much as possible and had even flat out lied to their friends at times, saying that they did not know who they were talking about. His sister had been getting picked on and bullied in school because she had the same last name so she stopped talking to him all together, going so far as to send him a text message telling him to lose her number, she no longer had a brother. That message destroyed him, sending him into a deep depression. They were close when they were younger, always spending time together. He tried on several occasions to get her to talk to him again. He would call and send her text messages but she would just ignore him. He always got her voicemail when he called. The phone would only ring once or twice before he heard her soft voice say that she couldn’t answer the phone right now so please leave a message which meant she was pressing the ignore button when he called. He wondered how the people he loved could cut him out of their lives with such ease and recklessness, without any second thoughts just because he was different than them. He didn’t ask for this, it just happened. He tried to explain that to them, to ask for help. But no one wanted anything to do with him. He was left alone to figure out how to live with his situation. Weeks of loneliness had gone by before he started getting requests for interviews, first from the local newspapers and magazines then the local television networks started calling. He did these interviews with the hope that he would be able to clarify for people the limitations to his ability and that he would like to be able to have some privacy back in his life. Unfortunately for him, that didn’t happen. After doing the interviews on the local level his story spread even further and faster. He received more requests for interviews, now from the national media, which he tried to avoid as much as possible. Then came the calls from the science community wanting to study him, to pick his brain, literally. One scientist actually wanted to cut open his head and poke around inside with no guarantee he would survive. Eric almost let him. The visions and the pain were nearly constant and becoming unbearable. His eyes nearly always bled and his head throbbed. His complexion became more and more pail and his skin began to sag. He was twenty-five years old but looked like he was a sickly forty-five year old man. Looking in the mirror one day he realized what was happening. The more he looked into the future the faster his body aged. He tried to turn it off. To stop seeing the future but couldn’t. Even in his dreams the future played. He saw everything that would happen in a half hour. He no longer just saw one out come. He saw all out comes of every decision overlapping over each other. He could focus on just one outcome for a moment but that was when the pain intensified from the constant warmth and dull pressure to blinding him with the fire in his head and blood from his eyes. Eric had stopped going out, stopped answering the phone and the door. He hadn’t left his apartment in weeks, except to run to the store to pick up groceries. Even then he had to fight his way out of his building, trying to be polite to the people camped outside the door. He would apologize and say that he couldn’t help them right now. They looked at him with either disgust or despair. They never cursed him, but they did let him know that they thought it was his job to tell them what they wanted to know. The last time he went shopping he spent all the money he could to buy as much as he could so he wouldn’t have to face them again for a while. He silently hoped that the crowd would either shrink or disperse all together if they didn’t see him for an extended period of time. He felt like cabin fever would begin to set in soon if he didn’t get out so he focused on his own future to see what would happen if he left for a little while. His vision doubled with his future, the fire flared in his head and his eyes bled. He was surprised to see that none of the people camped outside the building would follow him even though the crowd had grown instead of shrunk while he had confined himself to his apartment. Keeping an eye on his future he got dressed and left his apartment and went down the stairs to the front door, then he saw it. A black sport utility vehicle parked around the corner. He saw that as he crossed the street the SUV would pull up to him and three men in black suits would approach him and then his vision went dark. He didn’t know what they did to him but he knew he had to get out at least for a little while. Just outside the door four people sat talking. The man sitting directly in front of the door looked up and saw Eric standing at the other end of the hall and nudged the man next to him. The two of them stood and moved to either side of the doorway. The others around them looked up at them and then at where they were looking. Seeing Eric they all slowly began to stand and move aside. Eric moved towards the door as a path formed outside leading away from his building. The walkway was lined with people from all walks of life. There were men, women and children of all ages. There were the wealthy and the poor, young and the old. He opened the door and stepped out into the fresh air. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to breath air that hadn’t been re-circulated by the window air conditioner he had in his bedroom. The air felt cool against his skin as he passed the faces of the people that wanted him to help them. The path lead away from the building turning to the right, directing him to go down the road. He thought maybe this was their way of telling him to run, to leave the area and never come back, giving him an easy out and chance at a fresh start. He passed by the last of the people gathered outside his apartment expecting them to grab at him and start to ask him to tell them something they wanted to know but they just stood there and watched him walk by. He looked at their faces, studied them as he passed and thought that they didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the crowd. They seemed too clean cut, too calm. The others shifted nervously, their eyes almost pleaded with him to go back inside. They didn’t have the look of those who were waiting for something. Eric made it to the corner and stopped to wait for the crosswalk signal to change. He waited for a minute before he turned to look at the crowd of people he had left behind. Everyone either had their head down or had sat back down. No one was watching him. Except the last two people he had walked by. They were watching him very closely. He turned back to the crosswalk and waited for another thirty seconds before it changed giving him the okay to cross. He stepped up on the curb on the other side of the street when the reflection of the sun caught the corner of his eye. He looked to his right and had to shield his eyes from the glare. After a moment his eyes adjusted and he saw what he was expecting. The black sport utility vehicle with blacked out windows. He looked away from the glare and picked up the pace of his steps hoping he would be able to change his future and avoid the men in the suits. He had made it another thirty feet before the SUV came around the corner and stopped just ahead of him in the street. Two men got out of the passenger side of the vehicle and blocked his path. A third had gotten out of the driver side and came around behind him blocking his retreat. The man from the passenger side backseat held the back door to the SUV open while the other two just stared at him. He didn’t know what they were there for just that darkness was next. He had seen this coming but he had to try something. He couldn’t just stay stuck in his apartment. He slumped his shoulders and climbed into the back seat followed by one of the suits. Another climbed into the passenger seat while the third went around and climbed in on Eric’s other side. As soon as the doors were closed the suit to Eric’s right pulled out a syringe and jammed it into his neck injecting God only knows what into his veins. Within seconds Eric’s eyes became impossible to keep open and his arms felt like they were filled with concrete. Before he could even think to ask what they were doing he was unconscious. Eric awoke confused, he sprang out of his bed and stumbled. Pain shot through his head from the back to the front and back again. He felt as though he was hung-over. The light spilling across the room hurt his eyes and his stomach growled with hunger. He had no idea how long he had been out. Once the pain subsided and he could focus his eyes he looked around in disbelief. He was in his own bed. He couldn’t imagine why some one would kidnap him and drug him only to return him to his own home. He walked around his apartment looking for any signs of tampering. Any sign that his place had been bugged, but he found nothing out of the ordinary. Thinking about what had happened, he stumbled his way toward the bathroom. He cursed when he stubbed his toe on the coffee table in the living room nearly knocking over the dish he made when he was in elementary school that now held his spare change and car keys. He turned on the light over the sink in bathroom and checked his neck. He found a little red dot on the right side of his neck, it looked infected. It really did happen. He stood there poking at the puncture mark, flinching at the sting, it felt infected. He splashed cold water from the faucet on his face and neck. He looked haggard, pale faced with bags under his eyes. His hair had started turning gray in spots. His body had started following in the same direction. His joints hurt and creaked when he moved. He groaned just picking up a towel to dry his face. On his way to the kitchen he looked out his living room window at what had now become the regular mass of people camped out in front of his building. He sighed, for a moment he had actually thought the people might have left. Normally he could hear the constant chatter from the group below his window but today there was nothing. A tractor-trailer went speeding by on the street without a sound. Eric grabbed the bottom of the window frame and pulled up. Nothing. The window didn’t budge. Another car went by without a sound. He tried again. Still nothing. He checked the lock. The latch was open. He went for the door and found that there was no doorknob. It had been replaced by a solid brass plate. He tried to grab the edge of the door but there wasn’t one. The door’s edge was inside the wall. He went to the kitchen and grabbed a screwdriver from the drawer next to the refrigerator. He went back to the door looking for the hinges knowing they were on the inside, because like all apartment doors his swung inward. The hinges were gone too. Panic and confusion began to set in. He looked around for anything that might be able to help him open the door but found nothing. He turned back to the window. It wouldn’t open but he could break it and call out for help. Or even climb down. He was only on the third floor. Eric grabbed the first thing he could find that would have enough weight to break the glass pane of the window. He picked up the bowl he used for his car keys and pocket change off the coffee table in the living room, spilling several dollars in change on the floor, and threw it as hard as he could at the window. The bowl hit the window dead center and fell, bouncing off the windowsill before landing on the floor. The window didn’t break, not completely. The glass was clearly cracked. It had spider webbed out in several directions from the spot where the bowl had struck but it wasn’t a window. What Eric saw outside the window now was the same as it was before except that the image was now broken and distorted by the cracks in the glass. He ran up to the window and put his hand on the pane. It was warm, like a television that had been left on for too long. Eric bent down and picked up the bowl again. He raised it over his head and brought down like a hammer falling on a nail. The screen popped as the bowl connected with it just above the center of the web and Broadway in Lancaster disappeared. Eric staggered backwards in disbelief dropping the bowl to the floor. The backs of his legs bumped the coffee table and he sat down hard on top of it the screwdriver still in his hand. Then he heard a click and the crackle of a speaker turning on, then a voice. “Mr. Hayes. You need to calm down. Just sit back and relax. Someone will be with you shortly.” Eric looked around for the source of the voice. His heart was racing. Trying to calm himself he concentrated on his future again. The fire and blood came then went. He saw nothing. He didn’t have thirty minutes left. In a room adjacent to his apartment two men sat at a computer consol watching several closed circuit television monitors displaying Eric’s apartment. They watched him as he sat on the coffee table looking around. One of the men picked the receiver up from a phone with no buttons. “Sir, he’s awake now. We have a problem. There seems to be a glitch with the audio system for the windows.” The man paused for moment then said “yes sir.” He hung up the phone and turned to his partner. “He’s coming down now.” A minute later the door to Eric’s apartment slid open and three men walked in. Eric stood up and turned to face them. He recognized two of the men from the black SUV. They were wearing the same black suits as before but now he could see they were also wearing radios with the curly ear pieces commonly seen worn by the Secret Service. The third man was wearing a dark gray suit with a pin of the flag on his lapel over his heart. He was an older gentleman with neatly combed salt and pepper hair. The two men from the SUV stopped just inside the door, one to either side. The older man came walking forward but stopped several feet away from Eric. “Who are you?” Asked Eric “You don’t recognize me? You must not follow the news too much.” The older man replied. “Where am I?” asked Eric before the man could explain who he was. “You are in a secure facility in Virginia. We brought you here hoping you would be able to help us. I have to say, it was a little difficult locating you. You look nothing like the photo in your file.” “Help you? How?” “With your gift. Do you have any idea how useful your ability could be?” “Why should I help you? You drugged and kidnapped me.” Eric said glancing at the two black suits by the door. One of them actually smiled. “Yes. I apologize for that. We were afraid we would lose you like we lost your predecessor. He eluded us for a long time. Unfortunately we found his body in a very rural area of your home town.” “And if I say no? Then what? I doubt you’re just going to let me go home.” The older man gave Eric a warm smile and said “No. You will have to remain here no matter what. If you are unwilling to help us we don’t want you helping anyone else.” Eric clenched the screwdriver in his hand tight. He knew he had no future left. He knew what he had to do. He looked the old man in the yes and said “You obviously know what I can do. So you know that I know what is about to happen.” The old man just looked at him. This wasn’t going the way he had hoped it would. Switching the screwdriver from his left hand to his right Eric lunged at the old man. Before he got three steps there two loud pops. Eric fell backwards, slammed into the wall and slid to the ground. The old man had covered his ears at the sound of the guns discharging behind him. He could smell the burnt gun powder in the air. He turned to the two men by the door and shouted “Stop shooting you fools. I want him alive.” Eric lay on the floor, the bullets hit him center mass just as the two men had been trained. One bullet hit him in the ribs puncturing a lung, the other was a direct hit to the heart. His eyes were open watching the old man run over to him shouting for his guards to get help. The old man knelt next to him, “Hang in there son. We’re getting help.” Eric looked at him, smiled and said, “The fire’s out” as a clear tear fell from his eye. ### Barrett O’Donnell lives in western New York with his wife and Daughter. You can connect with him online. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BarrettODonnell Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BarrettODonnell12