Stupefying Stories: March 2014
Page 14
“Yeah, but not right away. He’ll keep a few days. Wait ‘til after my fit.”
Katie fixed her pale blue eyes on him, and Paul felt vacuum where she had been for three hard years. “Sure,” she said.
Paul slept badly that night and woke in the morning to hear himself babbling. He managed to stop this by sheer force of will. The headache and voices were an all-pervasive agony. His world turned dark at the edges, as he slipped away. Sanjay had called the shot right on, six days. Paul went to the shelter, blew clear his bowels one last time, returned to find Katie talking to the cops. He stayed away, got a coffee, got another for Katie. When he came back, the cops were gone, and so was Jonathan. Katie was cleaning house, Paul guessed, getting ready to leave. Getting ready to sell Paul out for a warm shelter bed and social services.
By noon the edges of Paul’s world were gone, and he was babbling again. He sat on the Super Bag and fought like hell to stay present, but it was a losing battle. As his world disappeared, Sanjay walked up and sat cross-legged in front of him. “Well? What’s your decision?”
Paul looked at him, wondering again if Sanjay was the real item, wondering if the Sleen were really going to bring a golden age. When he looked at it hard he didn’t have much choice. Katy was leaving, and he would be vulnerable. With Jonathan dead, there was no one to look after him when he had his fits. The little children were just going to have to suck it up, and the rest of humanity along with them, on the chance the Sleen were on the level. He picked up the contract and said, “I’ve always been a long-term thinker,” and he signed the document. Sanjay was carrying a black thermos, which he opened and poured out a cupful of something thick and grey. Paul drank it. It was bitter, which struck him as appropriate.
“Ten days from now we will take control of the Earth. You will be semi-lucid during this pregnant pause. The brew you just drank will be rewriting your DNA to get rid of your condition, and it’ll be changing your brain chemicals as well. When we Sleen arrive, I will come to get you. Congratulations on your decision, richest man on Earth.”
“When you think about it, it’s not really a choice,” Paul said. He meant this mostly on a personal level, looking at his situation, but Sanjay brushed past this with:
“Glad you see it that way. You made out all right.”
Paul said nothing to this, and Sanjay rose and put the contract in his valise. “Ten days, Paul. Get lots of rest, and don’t fight the heat. I’ll be back on the day we arrive.”
Paul nodded, then he lay down as Sanjay left. He felt woozy and nauseated, and there was a hot sensation throughout his body. The voices were whispering up a storm in his mind.
“Don’t worry,” Katie said to him. “I’ve been through it; it’s not so bad. I’ll be here.”
“Stick around when they come, and I’ll cut you in on my take,” Paul said. “You earned it.”
Katie eyed him up with a sad look. “It’s been a hard three years, Paul. I’m not cut out to be a nurse-maid. Not my thing. If this Sanjay guy pays you, I’d be glad to take your money. Get going again in life.”
Then Paul’s world dissolved into pain and heat and sweat and the babble of diseased voices.
¤
He was just coming back to himself when the Sleen arrived, and everything changed.
Randal Doering has a BA in creative writing and an MA in anthropology. He lives in San Diego, California, which has superlative weather year around. He writes mostly contemporary fantasy, with some secondary world fantasy and urban fantasy and a smattering of science fiction as the mood strikes. He has published 17 stories in the small press and semi-pro magazines and has self-published ten novel-length works through Amazon.com’s CreateSpace program. He has won honorable mention in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest. At forty-nine, he has been writing in a serious way for twenty-seven years. You can download two of his free novels from http://www.randaldoering.com and find links to his for-sale works on Amazon. He believes that travel is a great teacher and travels as much as he can, both within the U.S. and abroad.
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