Sowing Season

by Brian Patrick Edwards

  “Ah, well how do you know?”

  “Their names show hesitations in the pen strokes. And there’s a hiccup between their first and last names.”

  “Hm, uh…interesting. So, you can learn things about people by their writing?”

  “Yeah, pretty good bit, actually.”

  “Think you could do one on me?” The guard asked, now more intrigued with Isaac’s skills and what they might reveal of himself. Women, and some men began straggling into the clinic, approaching the sign-in sheet. Suddenly, Isaac actually felt relieved about Susan’s insistence that they arrive so early. The line that was forming looked miserable. People stood, waiting peevishly for the one in front of them to finish registering.

  “Yeah, write me a paragraph and I’ll see what I can pick out while I wait. Tell me about your night and include a lie about it,” Isaac instructed, laughing, inwardly. It infuriated him when people requested such things. It was always quite the same: normal folks’ writing revealed normal folks’ problems. Isaac preferred criminals with their felon claws, the batwings, and edgy characters that revealed back-stabbing and a hatred for the opposite sex, or violent tendencies. With certainty, he mused that nothing would bore him more than analyzing David’s lower zone idiosyncrasies. Even the chickish writing of a bubbly eighteen-year-old woman would probably prove more interesting. “Just bring it over to me once you’re done. I’m going to sit with my wife.”

  “Sure thing!” The guard beamed excitedly in anticipation of his upcoming inspection. Taking a sheet of paper and the pen, he began immediately.

  Isaac walked towards his wife who sat upon a blue cushioned chair in the lobby. She stared blankly into space, likely reading her favorite blog on her Visum. She definitely had resting witch-face syndrome -- that look that could probably set something on fire if she tried hard enough. It wasn’t a pleasant sight -- she truly was beautiful -- yet the expression on her resting face was like hardened armor.

  Isaac remembered the night he first approached her when he was out with friends several years ago. When he first saw her from across the bar, she stood out amongst the others, like a Venus Flytrap. Unique and breathtakingly gorgeous, but likely the end to anything that landed on her.

  “Hey boo,” he said carefully as he approached her, hoping the Flytrap’s jaws wouldn’t close on him as he sat beside her in the lobby.

  “Isaac made a new friend?” she replied with a chuckle.

  Isaac looked over at the guard who was busy journaling and responded quietly, “Um, no, he’s just wanting the handwriting analysis.”

  "You poor thing. Well, hopefully, we'll get called in before you have to do anything."

  The clock ticked to eight-fifteen right as Isaac checked, “Think they’ll see us early?”

  “I don’t know. Hopefully. It’s apparently going to take four to five hours.”

  “Lewis?” a voice called from a newly opened door, beside the kiosk. A woman, probably the doctor’s assistant, stood there looking around for her patient. The couple promptly stood and made their way to the caller.

  “Yes?”

  “Hey, Mrs. Lewis, we’ve been having some network issues or something of the sort this morning and…”

  “Yes?” Susan’s voice graveled, the anger emerging as she began to suspect what was coming.

  “We’re just having difficulty pulling your information. Do you, by any chance, have physical documentation with you today?” Susan shook her head from side to side, crossed her arms, and sighed.

  “Well, we need to make copies of a physical ID because we can't connect to our server, apparently." Isaac immediately thought back to what the guard had mentioned.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Several other women made their way through the front door and further lengthened the check-in line.

  “I wish I were ma’am. You’d think we’d be beyond IDs and such in this day and age. Then again, we still have a fax machine.” The woman laughed and found no lightened moods in her guests. “Would mine suffice?” Isaac asked, reaching for his.

  “I’m afraid not, sir. She’s the one we need to verify.”

  “This is ridiculous.” Susan began fidgeting with her hair, combing at it with her hands irritably, “Why can’t you just call your technical support?”

  “We have, but it may be a while before they’re able to send anyone out.”

  Isaac had an idea, “Could you guys go ahead and get her set up? I’ll run home real quick and grab whatever you need.”

  “Um,” the nursing assistant thought, “I guess that would be alright.”

  “Honey, you can’t just leave me here alone,” Susan whined, gripping his arm.

  “They’re just going to prep you.” Isaac rubbed her back to reassure her, “Get you to a room. You’ll be okay. I’m sure you don’t want to wait in the back of that line.” Susan looked over at the miserable people standing in line and then over to the coughers that sat reading in the lobby.

  “Alright.”

  "I love you, honey." Isaac leaned forward to kiss, Susan turned her face away suddenly and his lips landed on the side of her head. She was never one for public affection.

  “I love you too, Isaac. Hurry along, now,” she gestured with her hand as if to shoo him away.

  …

  Isaac watched his wife vanish behind the door along with the nursing attendant. A noise of flapping papers caught the attention of his ears. It was the guard at the counter, David. He walked over to him to obtain the paragraphs he wrote. Isaac’s eyebrows raised in surprise when he saw just how much that guard had written in such a short amount of time.

  “Wow! This might take a while,” Isaac laughed.

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m just really fascinated.” David grinned.

  “What time do you leave for the day?

  “In about forty minutes, at nine. I left my email on there for you.”

  “Oh, nice! I’ll send it over once I’m done. If you turn out to be free of psychotic tendencies, I’ll include an application.” Isaac smiled, shook hands with the man, and set about his mission to gather the things needed for Susan’s appointment.

  He could picture her, red-hot with rage, waiting in a patient room. The thought made him giggle a bit, as he rode over to their house. A red woman, gorgeous, yet terrifying in a hospital gown --fuming and seething with frustration. The poor nursing assistant likely could do nothing to calm her; she’d go back and speak sourly to all the other nurses after having to deal with Susan.

  Isaac watched the time pass like a hawk circling his prey during his ride to the house, anxious to get back to Susan quickly as possible. Time kept speeding forward despite his anxiety. Minutes felt like seconds and then, before he knew it, he arrived. The time showed eight-thirty-two.

  “She is going to kill me,” he muttered quietly to himself, searching the drawers and file cabinets like a madman. He made a mess everywhere he looked, another thing that would enrage Susan once she got home, but he didn’t have any spare time to clean up after himself. Urgency took over his very being. He couldn’t understand why he felt it so strongly. Skin-crawling sensations of impending doom deeply unsettled his spirit. The hairs on his back stood when he finally located Susan’s collection of documents and identification. About damn time. He felt some relief, suddenly, but only momentarily, and the anxiety came hurtling back. The unsettled feeling -- it was like the tides of the oceans -- washed over him unchanged as it permeated his being once again. Isaac checked the time once, right when he climbed into the waiting cab — eight-forty, it read.

  …

  He sat in the cab’s passenger seat, wondering why it failed to follow his order to continue its trip. “Hello, Jasmine,” he called, using the car service’s AI name, “can we move damn it? I’m in a hurry!”

  “Sir, your destination has been set to ‘off limits.’”

  The AI woman's hollow voice filled him with terror. He was no stranger to the emergency protocols followed by public transports.
He knew exactly what she meant by it. In all likelihood, something was happening in the area, but that ‘something’ could be anything. Filled with sickening dread, he feared the worst, “Move, damn it! I work for the department. If there’s an emergency, then I need to be there, you POS!” The car didn’t respond and continued its non-responsive attitude even with his angry blows pommeling the side door.

  “Location is off-limits.”

  Isaac had already tried to call Susan after the car’s initial response to his commands. The cell tower was, apparently, overly busy. It only rang and rang. Endless ringing. The impending doom manifested itself. The feeling he experienced in the pit of his gut began to crush his entire interior being with pressures and sensations that were impossible to ignore -- the kind people only consciously experience in times of great crisis.

  “Unity?" Isaac shouted as he began to investigate local news within his Visum. He got no response. However, despite Unity’s silence, the cab began to roll forward, increasing in speed at an unbelievable pace. "What in hell is happening?"

  He called for Susan again, but he heard no ring at all this time around. Silence. Then a voice came through, notifying users of the high call volume, citing a nationwide outage. Isaac couldn't vent the cacophony of emotions assaulting his interior person. There was nothing he could do as the car sped through the streets. The ensuing interior chaos made him unsure of what emotion was even appropriate to feel as they passed through him, flipping and changing faster than he could react to them.

  “Unity, I know you hear me. Answer me!” Isaac screamed out in frustration. At that moment, the cab turned a corner and his eyes detected a column of smoke rising from the direction of the clinic. His heart sank and he desperately tried to deny the reality of what he knew to expect. “No…no, no, no,” Isaac whimpered to himself, “no, please. Please, God." He leaned forward in his seat, trying to get a better view of the scene ahead of him. Emergency responders raced past him, their lights strobed as the blur of color rushed forward, blocking his sight. “What the hell is happening?”

  Finally, with the clinic in sight and filling his vision, hot tears burned at the edges of his eyes and out loud to no one at all, he cried out, “My God! Susan! Susan, no, baby…please no. Jesus, please!” The unbelievable sight made him dizzy, lightheaded and his thoughts were incomplete. Only feelings and basic emotions made themselves known to Isaac: fear, sadness, shock. His lips stammered as his head rattled atop his neck spewing curses and shouts.

  He stumbled out of the cab and fell before the inflamed and smoking building on all fours, cutting his hands and knees on the glass that had blown outward from the building’s window frames. The middle portion of the structure had completely collapsed upon itself; its roof sunken within the confines of the walls. Flames and clouds of black smoke billowed from the doors and windows as if it escaping the very gates of Hell itself.

  “Susan!” he shrieked, barely forming the word in an understandable tone. “I was only gone for a few minutes...how...how so quickly? What happened? I don’t...I don’t understand. Why?” The slobbering and tearful man stood and looked for anyone who made it out, trying to identify any as his wife. There were bodies laid out in the parking lot to his left, only a very few showing any signs of life. Rigor-mortis had already begun to set in for some of the bodies, bending and curling their arms. Although the stiffness of death can sometimes occur within ten minutes, it often takes several hours, so Isaac couldn’t be sure whether some of the bodies actually moved or if the waves of heat passing over them just created the illusion of life.

  He didn’t see red hair on any of the bodies, but some of the women’s hair had been completely burned off, leaving their heads scorched and bald. Isaac reached for one of the bald corpses dressed in a clinic gown and turned her over onto her back. The face wasn’t recognizable due to the burns covering it and a foul odor reeked from the burnt flesh. The intense heat and fire had turned the eyes of this ‘Jane Doe’, this unknown female, white. Dead eyes with no life in them stared up at him -- hazy and dry like those of a fish left long out of the water.

  “Susan, baby?” Isaac shouted into the blackened face, shaking the body to no avail. How confused he was and how desperate to find her. Yet, he was not able to discern if this woman was his beloved wife. He startled as he realized that her cooked flesh began to peel off under his tight grip, revealing pink and red meat beneath.

  “Ah!” he screamed. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He pulled his hands back from the stranger’s sticky and ragged skin to wipe the tears and snot from his face upon his coat sleeve. He looked again over the other bodies. Some of them were completely scorched and their flesh was as charcoal, charred and cracked with red streaks of ligament and other tissue exposed underneath. Many were missing arms or legs, which did not bleed, and some had their entrails hanging out of their bodies beside them. Isaac realized he was looking for his wife amongst a pile of dead bodies.

  “Where are you?” he screamed. “Please God, please, let me find my Susan.”

  “Sir, you need to get back. This area is too hazardo-”

  Isaac shoved the firefighter back, freeing himself of his grip, “I’m an officer.”

  “Sorry sir, I didn’t see a badge,” the firefighter answered, putting his hands out, indicating he meant no harm. “Are you okay? Were you in the explosion?”

  “Explosion? How? Wha…what happened?”

  “We don’t know yet. We got calls all over the cit-”

  “My wife…my wife was in there,” Isaac interrupted, pointing his finger and trailed off quickly from the man, to continue his search for her. Hoses fired into the building. The crew tried to fight back the flames still spewing outwards and gigantic hovering water drones gushed water from above the building, casting the smoke in every direction as they moved in and out of it. The inside of the clinic sparkled with embers and melting metals. Sparks flared onto the clinic’s marble floors from hanging lights that had partially detached from the ceiling. Isaac could barely stand to look into the flames because the intense heat burned his face. Even though the ambient temperature outside was frigid, it made no difference. The heat forced him to shield his face with his arm. He stood there looking for a way in, calculating a badly formed plan to find her.

  “Sir, you can’t go in there,” warned the same fireman, grabbing at Isaac before he could launch himself into the inferno.

  “I think my wife’s in there! Please, you gotta do something.”

  “We have a crew dispatched already, they’ve been pulling people out. Have you checked by the ambulances?”

  Isaac turned and, for the first time, saw the grouping of enormous ambulance busses indicated by the firefighter. Their lights flashed rapidly and agonizing wails of injured people came from them -- muted -- under the screaming sirens and firefighting equipment. He didn’t even notice them upon his arrival, the shock of it blew away all rationality from his mind. He noticed many EMTs running from bed to bed, treating anyone they could and packing up the others for transport to the nearest hospital. They laid nearby in agony, waiting. Time took its toll on many of them, as their lifeless and scorched faces stared blankly into the blue sky above.

  “Susan!” he called out, rushing towards a red-headed woman in a torn gown that exposed her breasts and abdomen. He could only see her from the side, squirming in the bed, screaming as he had never heard. "Sus-” his voice broke away as the EMTs pulled her towards a very large ambulance bus.

  “Do you know this woman?”

  “She’s my wife. I think that’s my wife!” Isaac reached for the bed that another EMT began to load into the ambulance. Panic shook his entire body as he shivered with nervous energy. This must be Susan, he thought, but he could not positively identify her and the other EMT prevented him from entering after her.

  “I’m sorry sir, we aren’t allowed to carry anyone. It’s packed with a dozen other patients and we have to save room for emergency personnel to work.”

&nbs
p; “Please just let me see her. It’s my wife. I’m sure of it!”

  "We've got to go, Marc! Get yourself in gear, or I'm leaving you!" shouted the other EMT as he climbed into the driver's seat of the gigantic vehicle.

  “Alright, get in, but stay in the corner. Don’t get in the way,” Marc, the EMT, ordered Isaac and opened the back door of the ambulance so he could enter. They both stepped into the vehicle and the driver began to drive before they even had time to close the doors completely.

  “Boss said no passengers!”

  “It’s his wife. Have some respect.”

  “Whatever, Marc. Boss is gonna be pissed.”

  Isaac wasn’t concerned with their bickering. They barely registered in his ears over the shrieks of the people groaning around him as he made his way closer to the red-headed woman's stretcher. “Hey, baby. Susan, I’m here. It’s Isaac,” he cooed gently, turning the woman’s face toward himself to make sure it was really her. A huge gash cut across the left side of her face. Bubbled, burnt skin surrounded one eye and stretched across her entire forehead down to her ear. The left eye was fully shut and her right eye appeared unable to detect him, even while he hovered directly above her. The pupil was stretched fully open and tears poured out of its corner, over the dirty skin.

  She screamed, shifted away, and knocked his hand from her violently. Isaac’s face streamed with tears as he looked over the rest of her, it was truly Susan. His Susan. The sight of her agonizing pain filled him with an aching grief as he leaned over and cried above her legs, one of which had a tourniquet tied around it. Below her left knee, her shin was splintered and slashed deeply in many areas from what he could tell by observing the reddening bleed-through on the bandages.

  “Apply pressure to her leg, sir,” commanded the EMT and Isaac obeyed him, placing his hand against the hot surface covered by bandages.

  He rose up and again looked over the rest of her, partially clothed and covered in bruising, swelling, and lacerations. Her left arm also appeared severely burned. The skin looked like it melted. It hung freely and the color looked to be an unnatural brown hue. The tattoo on her wrist was barely visible due to the discoloring and her middle two fingers were completely missing.