Second Chances

by P. D. Cacek

  Jessie sat down. You heard what I said?

  Abbie nodded.

  And Jessie glared back. “And you were so high and mighty—”

  I’ll help you tell Dad if you want.

  THIS OLD MAN, HE HAD ONE!

  You aren’t a freak.

  Get out and stay out. I mean it.

  Jessie….

  “GET OUT!”

  “Girls?”

  Shit.

  “Girls, would you come down for a minute, please?”

  Jessie reached the door first, opened it and slammed it shut behind her as her sister reached for it. She kept ‘This Old Man’ on constant replay inside her head all the way down the hall.

  Abbie was only a few steps behind her and coming fast when Jessie pulled to a stop at the second to bottom stair. Their father was standing in the entrance hall, holding a large box.

  “We were studying,” Abbie said before Jessie got a chance. “I know it’s late. We were just going to bed. What’s that?”

  The box was purple and carried a U.C.U.A. logo in gold letters.

  “You won the door prize?” Jessie asked and their father laughed.

  “Follow me,” he said and headed for the kitchen.

  They found him at the breakfast table holding a severed head in his hands.

  “Sit down, girls, I have something to show you.”

  * * *

  Haverford, Pennsylvania / 11:25 p.m.

  It was a much nicer room than the one in the hospital and the staff seemed much more invested in Curtis’s care and well-being. The facility, on the whole, was far superior and….

  Eva gave up trying to think of additional endorsements and shut the laptop. She’d begun keeping an online journal for Curtis to read when he came home, but it was getting harder to find new ways of saying the same thing.

  The Transitional Care and Rehabilitation Facility of Haverford, LLC, was much better than the hospital but for the amount of money they charged it should have been.

  Of course she wouldn’t mention cost to Curtis. He was worth any amount and Eva had made that clear when they admitted him. Her husband still worried about the money; naturally that would be the only thing he’d be concerned about. But what was a few thousand dollars a month compared to their son’s future?

  Besides, once Curtis healed and reached his full potential, he’d naturally pay his father back. Curtis was a genius and geniuses were always sought after for high-paying positions.

  When they weren’t saving the world.

  Eva looked across the room to where Curtis slept peacefully on a bed that vibrated every few seconds to prevent bedsores and lung infections. A genius probably invented that.

  Had she written about the bed?

  Eva opened the laptop and began scrolling through her last dozen entries when a nurse walked in carrying a small tray.

  “Mrs. Steinar, I thought you might like some juice and cookies.”

  “How thoughtful. Thank you.”

  Eva nodded to the window ledge next to the recliner she was sitting in and where she’d slept for the first week Curtis was at the facility. Of course, he probably hated knowing she was there, he was so independent, but she knew how much he hated change.

  Although she could tell he felt better about it after she’d brought him some books and his favorite periodic table of the elements blanket.

  “Will you be spending the night, Mrs. Steinar?” the nurse asked as she set the tray down.

  Eva patted the chair’s padded arm. “No, I think I’ll just nibble a few of these cookies and head home. I have some of Curtis’s washing to do.”

  “You know we do have a laundry here on-site with forced-air sterilization drying units.”

  Eva knew exactly what the facility had. Before consigning her son’s recuperation to them, she’d done extensive research on both Google and Yelp.

  “I know and it sounds lovely, but Curtis likes the way I wash his clothes.”

  The nurse nodded. “Of course. Well, if there’s anything you need you know where the call bell is. And if I don’t see you before you leave, good night, Mrs. Steinar.”

  Eva opened the laptop when the nurse left and scrolled back down until she came to her last entry, adding: Wonderful service, and included five asterisks because they were the closest thing that looked like stars.

  * * *

  Arvada, Colorado / 1:43 a.m.

  They just stood in the doorway and stared at the head. He couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t the sort of thing he usually brought home from U.C.U.A. meetings.

  Molded from soft latex rubber, it had been specifically designed to be gender-neutral and very realistic. Under a shaggy hairstyle that looked a great deal like Jessica’s pixie cut but would also be appropriate for a man, the face, removed of any genetic or racial identifying markers, was serene, eyes closed as if sleeping. The skin tone was light gray, which accentuated the blue shadows around the eyes, lips and hollows of the cheeks.

  It was a perfect depiction of death and, he had to admit, a bit startling until you noticed the U.C.U.A.’s logo and words For Demonstration Use Only stamped across the front of the truncated neck.

  Jess could tell his daughters were impressed.

  “You won a head?” Jessica asked.

  Abigail made a face.

  Jess had to take a deep breath to keep from laughing. “No. Okay, look, it’s late and you both have finals in the morning, why don’t you go to bed and I’ll tell you all about this when you get home from school.”

  “You expect us to sleep with a disembodied head on the kitchen table?” Jessica pulled out a chair and sat down. Abigail was still standing in the doorway. “Come on, Dad, give.”

  “I’m okay to wait,” Abigail said, then looked at her sister and took a seat. “Yeah, okay. Show us.”

  God, he loved them.

  Jess turned the head so it faced his daughters.

  “It’ll just be a quick demonstration. Ready?”

  “No,” Abigail said, then jumped and rolled her eyes toward her sister. “Yes.”

  Jess hadn’t noticed what Jessica did to make her sister jump. As far as he could tell she’d just been sitting there looking at the head and smiling. Daughters…who knew what went on inside their heads?

  “All right.”

  Jess reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the other item he’d been given that night. It rested inside a purple case similar in shape and size to the pen and pencil set he’d received from his grandparents when he graduated seminary school.

  “Computers are nice, but a true minister needs to write his sermons.”

  Their gift had been one of the most important things he’d ever been given.

  This was a close second.

  Abigail gasped when he took out the syringe and Jessica jerked back against her chair.

  “It’s okay, this one is only to demonstrate with. See?” Jess attached the needle to the syringe base and tapped his finger against it. “It’s plastic, no owies.”

  The girls smiled at the word they once used for shots.

  “I’ll be getting a shipment of real ones in a few days, so if a box arrives when I’m not here, just put it on my desk, okay?”

  When they nodded he reached down and took out an empty sponge-topped vial from the box. Only for show; the real ones, filled and ready, would be shipped along with the syringes.

  Jess set the items side by side on the table next to the head and waited for Jessica to reach for them. She’d always been the more curious of the two.

  He put his hand over hers.

  “Not until you’re older.”

  “But it’s empty.”

  Jessica looked up at him. Normally he would have let her lead him into a full discussion, and that would come later, but it was late
and he was too keyed up.

  “The real ones won’t be.”

  “What will they be filled with?” Abigail asked.

  “Sodium hypochlorite.”

  “Bleach?”

  Jessica looked at her sister as her hand slid out from under his.“Show-off.”

  Jess smiled and picked up the syringe and vial.

  “That’s right, just ordinary common bleach. Now watch, it’s very simple.” Piercing the sponge with the plastic needle, Jess pantomimed filling the syringe. “Dr. Ölversson said it didn’t take much, but suggested we always use a full syringe to give the family members a sense of security.”

  Jess looked at his daughters as he withdrew the needle. Under the warm yellow overhead light, the girls’ green eyes deepened into sparkling emeralds.

  “We have been given a weapon in our continuing fight against the imposters that seek to corrupt us.” The words weren’t his; he was repeating the ones he’d heard after the video, but he wanted his daughters to hear them and feel the same sense of power they had inspired in him. “We might not be able to do anything about the imposters that already walk among us, but we can stem the tide. With this.”

  Putting the vial down, Jess held the syringe up as if it did contain fluid, and cupped the head under the chin the way he’d seen done in the video. His daughters watched, silent.

  “Okay. Imagine this is someone who has died…a friend or loved one or the loved one of a friend, or even a stranger whose loved one has asked us to help ensure that the blessed dead be laid to rest whole. One body. One soul.”

  “One body, one soul,” his daughters answered.

  “Dr. Ölversson has concluded it takes approximately three minutes for a Traveler to invade the body, if it’s going to happen, but in those three minutes the individual is clinically and legally dead. So….”

  Holding the head steady, Jess inserted the needle into the right ear and depressed the plunger. Abigail gasped, but Jessica remained silent, her eyes following his hand until he withdrew the syringe and laid it on the table.

  “The bleach destroys enough of the brain tissue,” Jess said as he withdrew the needle and set it on the table, “to render it unusable for subjugation by any malignant entity.”

  “But what if it…” Maybe it was the overhead light, but Jess thought Abigail looked almost as pale as the latex head. “…a Traveler arrived before the three minutes are up?”

  “Seriously?” her sister asked. “You just do it. It’s not like you’re really killing anything. A Traveler already died, we’d just be making sure a True Born’s body doesn’t get stolen.”

  “No,” Jess said, “if that were to ever happen we’d have to stop.”

  “Why?”

  “Because then it would be murder.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.”

  “Stop it.”

  Both of them, father and namesake, watched Abigail push away from the table and leave the room. Jess took a deep breath.

  Jess picked up the box and packed away the demonstration tools. “Do you think I should talk to her?”

  “No, she’ll be okay,” Jessica said. “She can’t even dissect a frog in biology without worrying about hurting it. She’ll come around.”

  “She doesn’t have to and neither do you. This is completely voluntary.”

  “Okay. Can I try?”

  He reached over and patted her hand. “I know it’s late and you’re probably sleepy, but didn’t you hear me say you had to be older? It’s a U.C.U.A. directive. You have to be twenty-one. Legal stuff, you know how it works.”

  “But think how good I’ll be in four years if I start practicing now.”

  Jess shook his head and slid the box across the table. He knew a father shouldn’t play favorites, especially a father with twins, but sometimes he just couldn’t help himself.

  Chapter Eleven

  May 31

  Haverford, Pennsylvania

  Eva took a sip of iced tea one of the day workers – Hi, my name is Julie – brought her and looked out through the solarium’s massive picture window to the facility’s rose garden and half acre of landscaped walking paths. Beyond the bright and smudge-free window, the roses were still leafing out and the buds just beginning to swell, but at least the warm weather had finally arrived.

  And if it continued, she’d have to show Curtis the roses.

  He liked roses, or had when he became interested in rose hybridization and tried to cross one of her white Saratoga Floribunda roses with a Blumex Parrot tulip to create the first-ever rainbow rose. Eva could still remember him huddled over his worktable carefully dissecting one rose plant after another and then grafting the pieces back together with glue he’d made from beeswax and honey. It had been a wonderful month. He’d actually come down to dinner excited, so full of words, describing everything he’d done or was going to do and what awards his roses, The Curtis Genius Rose, would win once they bloomed.

  When the grafts didn’t take and the plants died he’d blamed her for not getting hardier stock and retreated back into silence and his room.

  But Eva still had the memories of that one perfect month and it had only cost them a little over six hundred dollars.

  Maybe he would like to see the roses.

  “I’m sure he would,” Eva whispered, making sure her mouth was hidden behind the rim of the plastic tumbler. There were too many long-care (a.k.a. terminal) residents, Alzheimer’s mostly, who mumbled and muttered to themselves and she didn’t want anyone to think she was one of those poor souls.

  Curtis would never forgive her.

  Finishing the tea, Eva checked the time on Curtis’s Seiko watch. She’d been wearing it since his accident to keep it running because, as he explained to her once, it didn’t have batteries but generated its own power by using the kinetic energy created by movement. Or something like that. The only thing Eva knew for certain was that it kept perfect time, which at the moment was unfortunate since it showed it was 11:14. He still had another fifteen minutes of hydrotherapy.

  Eva sat back and tapped the empty tumbler against the arm of the lounge chair, smiling and holding it up when the duty nurse looked up.

  “Can I get another?”

  * * *

  Arvada, Colorado / 9:14 a.m.

  “I’m sorry, Jess, but could you go over it again, please?”

  Nodding, Jess removed the syringe from Fred’s ear – Jessica had decided the rubber head needed a name – and set it down on the table, covering it with his hand because he’d noticed Laura Wingate staring at it during his first two demonstrations.

  “Sure, Richard, not a problem.”

  And it wasn’t.

  They were friends, more than friends. Richard had not only brought him into the U.C.U.A. but stood by him during the darkest time of his life after Monica died. Jess would stay there all day and night and explain until his voice went if that was needed. He knew what they were both thinking while he demonstrated the procedure and he couldn’t imagine the pain it was causing them.

  Carly wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  “Okay, once it has been verified that the individual has passed and is declared legally dead, and remember this has to come from a licensed physician or certified EMT, you insert the needle into the ear canal and inject the solution into the brain.”

  Jessica had suggested he use the term solution instead of bleach. She said it made it sound more scientific.

  “And that will stop anything from happening?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you have to do it right after the person…dies.”

  Jess nodded again. Neither Richard nor Laura had been to a U.C.U.A. meeting or attended Sunday service since they brought Carly home from the hospital, which was completely understandable, and even though he felt a bit like a circling vulture – there was still a ch
ance Carly would recover – Jess knew he had to be there to show them their only weapon against the unthinkable.

  “And then you just….” Laura nodded at Jess’s hand.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  Jess watched her fold her hands on the big dining room table that had been the center piece for birthday parties – his own surprise Lordy, Lordy, Jess is forty – dinner parties and God only knew how many school projects – and nod. “Okay.”

  “And when it’s done, we have assured the loved one’s body and soul are joined forever in death. One body, one soul.”

  “One body, one soul,” Richard repeated, but Laura only nodded again. “Okay.”

  Jess took a deep breath and uncovered the syringe, watching them watch him as he lifted it toward Fred’s ear. They were his dearest friends and they seemed on the verge of collapse, but Jess knew that if he gave in to his compassion and left without making sure they knew how to prevent an Imp from stealing another’s body, perhaps that of their own daughter, he’d never forgive himself.

  They didn’t deserve what had happened to them.

  None of them did.

  Jess stopped moving the syringe forward and reversed direction, holding it out across the table’s polished surface.

  “Would you like to try, Laura?”

  Her eyes widened as she pushed back in her chair.

  “I’ll do it,” Richard said, reaching for the syringe, but Laura stopped him.

  “No, it’s okay, I’ll do it.”

  Jess handed her the syringe and turned Fred to him as he pushed the head toward her. The first few times were easier if you didn’t see the face.

  Laura took a deep breath. “What do I do?”

  “Cup the chin with your free hand. That’s right.”

  “It’s cold.”

  Jess nodded. “Now, bring the syringe up to the ear. All it takes is a slow and steady pressure. The needle is fine enough that there won’t be any resistance. Just keep going until you can’t push any farther. Then push the plunger all the way in.”

  “Seems easy enough,” Richard said, but winced visibly when his wife stabbed the needle into Fred’s ear. “Yikes!”