by Hugo Huesca
The only thing I knew was that I was so angry my vision whitened. Any ideas of victory and adventure died instantly inside me, replaced by a cold, seething, white hot rage.
“You put one of these in the breakfast?”
He caught my death-stare and paled, “Yeah, on the juice, but…”
“So you drugged me,” I said, my voice so cold it was like a jagged block of ice clawing at the back of my throat. “You knew that I wouldn’t believe your insane delusions, and you went and drugged me. Made sure I shared your delusions.”
“Fred, that…” started Cooper, eyes wide, but I cut him off.
“Worst part is I should have known it. I thought you wanted my help. Perhaps this crazy tale was just a cry for attention, to get you into rehab or something. But it wasn’t that, was it?
“You couldn’t stand seeing me succeed while you rotted in this hole, could you? You saw me go and be a successful lawyer. You were jealous, so you made up this stupid farce so I would come back and be just like you. A small town failure with a drug problem. Living in this fantasy world that you made up so you could think your life was special in some way and not a pathetic letdown…” I wanted to say more, I wanted Cooper to hurt more, but I was so mad with rage that words failed me.
“But…” He said, like a wounded puppy that didn’t understand why I yelled at him. That only served to piss me off even more.
“Don’t you talk to me ever again,” I spat. “If I find out you even went near my parents with your insane bullshit, I will come back straight here and beat you senseless.”
He tried to argue, but I pushed him to the ground and he collapsed easily, because I weighed more, and I was strong, and he wasn’t. I left the living room in a cloud of fury, tripping on junk because the tears were blurring my vision. Then I left the neglected front garden with long, fast strides until I reached my car.
I gave a dry good-bye to my parents, refusing to explain anything. I did ask them to tell me if they saw Cooper coming near the house in the future, and that he was no longer welcome. Then I went out of town and out of Cooper’s life forever.
Next week it was back to my good new partner desk, at my firm, which looked sweeter now that I had seen the alternative, what sheer small-townness could do to a person. The city clubs and club-girls and one-month girlfriends seemed more attractive than ever. I even pretended to like my one-room apartment in the ghetto part of town, where the automatic cars roared constantly day and night. The airplanes roar shook the walls and floor sometimes, while they passed across the gray sky with their invisible contrails behind.
Every single part of this city was more real than my dumb small town, so I jumped straight on with it. I hopped into my work with intensity and never thought again of Cooper Kaproc.
Except that can’t be all there is. You are reading this tale, right? It was just how it felt. It was exactly how I intended it to go long after.
It was… well, after the first week, work seemed more or less the same as before my partnership. Filling paperwork and running around, but now, instead of having some middle-aged guy screaming at me, it was a senior partner old enough to be my grandpa.
And the job was hard as always, but sometime after that week, those few minutes I sometimes got between checking accounts and scanning dusty books for references, started wearing heavily on me.
The silence became unbearable.
One day, when no one was around I searched the web for the name of that bottle of pills that Cooper had given me. It wasn’t a hard search, you know, the first link was to a well-known lab. It explained clearly every effect those pills had and included a clear list of every possible side effect, which wasn’t long, although it did include a slight chance of total renal failure. Anyways, those pills he gave me?
Clinical-grade anti-hallucinogens. Nothing else. The same kind they give now to schizophrenic patients, to allow them to live a normal life.
I must’ve stood there for an hour, neglecting my paperwork. Just stood there, mouth agape, looking at the web’s results.
After the shock had worn out a bit, I stole three full suits from the office’s closet and drove all the way back to my hometown.
The rest is history. We started small, just a single-room office while we took clients on the down low, constantly terrified that someone would come to disappear us. It was close, a couple of times, you know. But we got good at it. There is a trick to dealing with this line of business, and it’s to promise them more trouble if we are not around than if they let us be. We have many sealed folders in bank accounts in other countries. To be delivered to journalists in the case of an accident. It’s standard procedure now, I think.
So we got big, word went around. The office is bigger now, and we hired more people. Coop has a knack for finding just the guys and gals we need.
Now you know where we came from, how serious we are about this job. It’s our life work. If you found this website, it’s because you lost the blindfold they put in front of society. Maybe you have some trouble with a haunted house, or a UFO abducted your sister, or if one lizard-overlord is getting nasty with you and you think there is nothing you can do. You are wrong. You can come to us. To Kaproc and Terrance, the first truly paralegal law firm in the whole world. Ask for us with your local tarot reader. Mention our name to your friend who is a bit too much into conspiracies. Your medium has our number. Maybe we are already waiting for you.
Give us a chance, if reality seems to lie to you, we got your back.
Brother of Considerable Size
Philip A. Newman didn’t see the great eye that had appeared in the color-TV of his living room overnight. He was still a bit asleep when he stomped down the stairs on his road to the kitchen, although he masked his tiredness using a stern scowl and the privacy his mustache granted his face.
Inside the modern kitchen, his wife was already making breakfast on the huge, sleek aluminum block that was the stove. Philip let himself drop on a chair by the kitchen’s table and waited for his morning coffee.
When the sensors of the kitchen-aid detected his weight on the table, it wheeled over to the jar of boiling water on a corner atop the stove. It reached for it with its mechanical extension and with great precision prepared his coffee just the way Philip had programmed it to do.
The aid was their latest addition to the commodities of the house. Philip and Lydia took great pains to keep the entire house up to the demands of modern living, and the cold technological feud the neighborhood families kept between one another. The day when that egotistical Mr. Vasquez had brought home some automated lawn mower, Philip had gone straight to the electronics shop and bought the kitchen-aid. So far the little bugger made coffee, cleaned a bit the easily accessible parts of the house, and some other small here-and-theres. To be honest, what it did wasn’t that important. What mattered was that he had one and Mr. Vasquez didn’t.
Philip heard the kids rushing down the stairs a second or two before they stumbled into the kitchen, fighting among themselves about who-knew-what. The big one, Junior, had his brother in a headlock, and Jimmy was trying to free himself by biting like a maddened possum.
Philip put an end to such nonsense with a warning glance and a grunt. The kids left each other alone.
“He started it,” said Junior. He took his seat at the table.
“I didn’t,” said Jimmy, and did the same.
His wife turned around, carrying a steaming plate of pancakes and bacon, in front of her pink apron. “Now, don’t make your father mad,” she ordered and put the plate at the center of the table. The kitchen-aid finished making the coffee; it put the steaming mug near the plate of Philip, along a brass sugar bowl. While the family stabbed at the pancakes, the aid went to the news-machine near the fridge –one metal box installed directly on the wall. It had the brand name engraved in silver at the top, a slot and some buttons at the end. The aid pressed the buttons with its arm-extension and the news-machine wheezed and whirred as it connected to C
ENTRAL. It received by radio-signals the latest news for the day, updated to the minute. It printed the newspaper quickly. It was in Philip’s hands before he finished his first pancake. Harrumphing with satisfaction, he buried his nose in the still-warm pages and took a large sip of coffee.
The family ate in silence, everyone lost in their own business. In his newspaper, Philip found an article about the latest New Vietnam’s complaints about the trade embargo.
“Seems like those grody nams are launching another ultimatum,” Philip said to no one in particular, “it is as if they want an atomic conflict.”
No one answered, and he didn’t expect them to. Reading the newspaper in the morning was his way of thinking aloud; he liked to show he was a well-read working man, versed in politics. It was a good example for the children. Their generation barely read anymore, with their videophones and music mini-cartridges. It was important they realized the status that came with the morning ritual of checking the news and enjoying a hot coffee.
He read another article. The East found itself some conflict again.
“The world,” Philip thought, gloomily, “is going to the drain in the fast track. Probably two years left before radioactive annihilation.” He had been sure of it for about fifteen years now, day in and day out. But he only had to be right just once. With the atomic missiles, once was enough.
After breakfast was over, the kids had to go and catch the school bus. Jimmy had an exam today, and his mother reminded him that he better do well, or else... She also set up a couple of pancakes apart in case good old Government Mike showed up later, as he liked to do.
Lydia went with them outside, to the sidewalk, while Philip got out of his chair. He left the newspaper on the table for the aid to dispose of, and went straight to the living room to catch some early-morning show before heading to work.
He got himself comfortable in his overstuffed armchair before he finally looked up and noticed the eye. It took over the entire screen of his color-TV. Philip raised one dark- brown eyebrow and leaned forward on the armchair. The eye looked at him, unblinking. Its pupil was steel-gray with an ivory-like sclera. It had long eyelashes that went a tad over the upper edge of the screen, still contained by the glass. It had no eyelids, so it was unable to blink, but it gave no signs of that bothering him. The eye appeared content watching Philip, and it followed his movements when the man got up and went around the living room table to watch it more closely.
Philip tried changing the channel. Maybe it had been a mistake, someone at the TV-station sending the wrong signal. Turned out, the TV was off. Philip had to accept the fact the eye was truly where it meant to be, so he went back to his armchair and stared at it, thinking, “well, this is new. I wonder if it can hear, inside that screen. It probably can’t, there is no microphone inside this model. I should have splurged on the one with voice-commands.”
Then he said to the eye:
“Hello over there! Didn’t know you were coming, sorry if I kept you waiting! Can you hear me?”
No reaction. Well, either it couldn’t answer, or it couldn’t hear, either way, it was the same. Outside, Philip heard the distinct sound of the bus making landfall a few meters in the street, in front of his home. Kids would board in a minute and be on route to the Venusian Institution in no time.
Just in time, too, he thought; he was bad at entertaining guests by himself, more so when he had no idea who or what they were. The uncomfortable silence was killing him slowly until the front door finally opened, and his wife entered the house.
“Lydia, have a good look at this!” Philip said, with a stern gesture to hurry her up. Confused, his wife walked towards him without looking at the TV, which was just the way with her: always missing the point. “Check this out. I think we have a visitor.”
His wife raised her eyebrows at him, with that attitude she got when he tried to order her around. Then she came over and raised her eyebrows even more, when she saw the huge eye staring at them from the color-TV, like some kind of Andromeda’s voyeur. But I’ve never seen an alien like that, thought Philip. And it would be rude to assume anyways. It was a human eye alright, only big and a tad sassy, coming in unannounced like that.
“Is it some new show?” Lydia asked him.
Philip scoffed and said, “Does it look like a show to you? The definition is all wrong, for one, and the TV is off, for another. That’s one guest we have here; only he chose to visit us... well, in a strange way.”
“Good morning to you, sir,” said his wife, who was the official party host when it was their turn to show off their home to the neighborhood. “Are you comfortable there? Is there something we can do for you? Anything to drink, perhaps?”
“Excellent idea, dear,” Philip purred, glad of having something to decide on. “Bring us the scotch, dolly, and be quick about it.”
Lydia rolled her eyes, with a slow, deliberate motion, making sure that Philip saw her. Then she was off to the alcohol drawer, where he kept his scotch locked under two keys because his sons were this close to puberty, and he thought he wasn’t a foolish man.
The ‘not-a-foolish-man’ had managed to stay alone with the strange visitor, again.
“Been having a nasty weather this last couple of weeks,” he said, trying a well-threaded conversational topic. No answer, so he tried another one, field-tested, “you heard about the game last night?” He gestured at his radio. It was fixed in the roof just on top of them, with a couple of high fidelity speakers in the corners of the living room. It was a powerful set; it could get baseball narration from Andromeda with perfect sound – not that he had any reason to do so. Andromedans sucked at baseball, with those awkward whip-arms of theirs.
“Yeah,” he mumbled when he heard no response. It was a tough crowd then; it would be so much easier if the eye gave him something to work with… God, what was taking that woman so long? “Have you seen my kitchen-aid? It’s a new model, real piece of work, got it just a month ago!” He said, in a stroke of genius.
“Here, let me show it to you,” and he went to the kitchen, ordered the little fella to follow him and came back to the living room, where the eye awaited in the same place.
“Fine model, huh?” He said with pride, turning the aid a couple of times to better show it off. “It comes with six programs, like cleaning, cooking ––not good cooking, true, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Makes coffee, too, and walks the dog, not that we have one… You can even add more programs if you buy the tapes! They got some at the store, but they are a tad bulky, and Lydia doesn’t know where we could store them.”
The eye obediently checked the aid out, from its voyeur-throne inside the screen of Philip’s color-TV. Or at least it kept watching whatever it was always looking at because bugger didn’t move a bit. Philip had quickly run out of conversation about his kitchen-aid, so he sat idly in his armchair, making the thingy turn around aimlessly. He felt vaguely stupid, which he hated. He had started to wonder why he bought the little aid. He had a wife that made an acceptable coffee, and she already got up before him to cook breakfast anyway.
He sent the aid away to the kitchen.
Now Philip was grumpy. He sat in silence, looking at the floor. The eye didn’t seem to mind.
His wife returned then, pushing the drinks tray, which floated two inches above the floor. The tray carried with perfect equilibrium a half-filled bottle of scotch, their whiskey glasses, and a brass bucket, filled with ice balls made by a small cooling mechanism in the alcohol drawer itself. A neat appliance to have and Philip insisted on using it. Even when having drinks that normally were drunk straight up.
Lydia just stood next to his armchair, tray by her side, looking at him with her smug face like she was waiting for something. Philip was about to nag her for not setting the drinks at the table when he realized the visitor couldn’t drink anything, trapped as it was inside the color-TV. It was just a steel-gray eye, with a mouth nowhere in sight.
Philip hated feeling stupi
d, but he hated more when his wife rubbed it in his face, so he decided to have a stern talking-at-her when he came back from work. But meanwhile, he had the grace to say:
“Well, it seems that we are in a bit of a bind,” he said to the eye while fetching his own scotch. “Aware as you are of your special circumstances, I think I’ll serve my own glass as a double and drink it for your health. Unless you mind, of course.”
The eye didn’t object, and Philip smiled a bit, congratulating himself on his ingenuity. He reclined on his armchair, and it was his turn of looking smug. His wife puffed, fetched herself a drink as strong as his and sat in her own chair. Poor Lydia, a fine intellect, but she was subject to the strokes of anger of woman-kind that clouded her judgment and made her little house-plots ineffectual.
“You showed him our kitchen-aid yet?” she asked, sipping her booze.
“Yes, yes, I did. He loved it, of course,” said Philip, “I do wonder if they have those back from where it… he is from. Probably not, because they are new models produced by local factories… Don’t worry if you don’t, dear guest: Our cargo rockets can travel far, and they are always opening new trade routes. Why, just a couple years ago, we didn’t get any color-TVs’ like the one you are, uh, in. But they are always opening new trade routes; and we bought our TV straight from the first shipment that arrived at stores, yessir.”
“Phil, you are boring him,” interrupted Lydia, even when she had no way of knowing that. To Philip, it seemed like the eye was listening with brazen interest. “You should show him that nice camping grill you got.”