Portals

by Amy Simone

  Cassie looked over the room. It was solid white and had just one small counter top in it with a sink.

  “I had him checked earlier in the spring for a cough but his pediatrician couldn’t find anything,” she explained to one nurse who had come in with a clipboard.

  She looked directly at Ralph. “It was nothing. That’s why I never told you about it.”

  “The esophageal tissue is so delicate,” Ralph said, frowning. “So far all they see is an inflamed portion, way down.”

  Cassie saw Josh had comfortably slumped against Susan with his head now lolling in her lap. The younger woman stroked the side of his face reflexively.

  “Know what?” Susan said suddenly. “Why don’t I take ole Josh here back to the house and keep him occupied? He doesn‘t need to be here.” She looked fully at Cassie, waiting for a reaction.

  Everybody in the room fell silent. Then Cassie spoke. “That makes sense to me,” she agreed.

  Cassie regretted that she hadn’t pursued Caleb’s throat issues more. She’d gotten sidetracked with all the moves and now her new relationship plus her escapades to the other side—that darn parallel universe or whatever it was. She wondered if the witch had made good on her promise to leave her son out of all this, then doubted it.

  “I will go outside for some air. Does anybody want anything?” she said after a while.

  “Coffee?” Ralph suggested, “actually, I’ll just get a coke down the hall.”

  She walked down the corridor. She felt disoriented. She saw a physical therapist helping a stroke patient make his way down the hall. How horrible to suffer a fate like that, she thought. A smoldering fury rose in her.

  At last she found an exit. It led to a massive outdoor atrium ringed by the hospital itself. Somebody had carefully cultivated roses and wisteria in an informal topiary. In the dead center of the open air island was an elaborate labyrinth set on crushed granite gravel, outlined by medium-sized stones. She sat on a bench near the opening of the walking maze and collapsed.

  Guilt washed over her. She’d been enjoying herself and the physicality of making love with Bob just a few hours ago and now this. How dare she do something like that when her son was so deathly ill.

  Another hospital visitor ventured out and walked aimlessly around the confines. It was an unpleasant looking woman, dressed in jeans and a crop top, who needed to smoke. The woman looked like she’d come from a bar. She lit up and stayed as far from Cassie as possible. The gravel crunched under her feet as she moved about. The sound of it grated on Cassie’s nerves. Eventually the visitor sat on a landscape boulder and lit up.

  It seemed that every cell in Cassie’s body was on fire. Her son was sick. The doctors didn’t know what they were dealing with. Intuitively Cassie knew if she tried to explain to them the chain of events, they’d have her committed. She picked up her cell, texted to Bob what was going on. She didn’t trust her voice just then and was afraid she’d burst into tears if she tried to talk to him. She sat still for a moment, then got itchy. Picking up her phone again, she sat hunched. On impulse she did something she hadn’t done in a long time. She surfed the net, seeking things to buy. Of course, she wouldn’t purchase anything she told herself—she just needed to concentrate on something else. It as an old habit.

  A small purse caught her eye. She clicked on it and approved the purchase for $90 almost before she realized what she’d done.

  Damn.

  She examined her fingertips. Why was she doing something like this at a time like this?

  After that, nothing looked promising or even halfway close to worth purchasing. She felt badly that she’d pulled the trigger and bought something she really didn’t need—again. She considered what Bob would do, then put the phone down and closed her eyes. It was quiet, just the way he liked things. Her mind drifted to memories of their lovemaking. She told herself not go there.

  The girl on the boulder made no noise. All Cassie heard was some traffic on the main street nearby, on the street side of the complex. Occasionally a jet flew overhead heading towards the airport. Yet the same vision kept coming to her mind—that of some monster with a huge gaping mouth and black features—mostly it was a flash of red and black and it kept advancing towards her. Was this some an omen? She wondered. Repeatedly she tried to wipe the slate clean and would open her eyes and re-start.

  Mediation didn’t seem like such a good idea. The heck with Bob’s way.

  A nurse wheeled a patient out into the yard. She saw the younger visitor was smoking, so she frowned and turned around.

  Cassie watched all this with dead eyes.

  Was her son going to make it? Her heart escalated every time she closed her eyes.

  In disgust with her failed attempts at meditation, Cassie stood up abruptly. Cassie heard the scratch of a match. The other visitor had lit up again. What was this? Her third? Cassie envied that this woman possessed a habit to divert herself. Cassie wished she could do something, anything, to take her mind away from this hospital. She hated the way she was feeling and did not want to connect any dots inside of herself right now. All she wanted to do was revolt against all emotions.

  Her feet and body seemed to gravitate towards the labyrinth, though, as if walking its paths could solve her son’s problems. Slowly, as if an automaton, she walked the circles within circles. It was a slow process with many wrong turns and tricks. Whenever she picked the wrong path, she had to re-track. This infuriated her. Nothing was easy. Nothing in her life was clear. Why was she stuck? And all these rocks—why was everything such a drab color? There were too many grays and dark brown shades. Did it have to look so darn natural? The heck with natural. Couldn’t these folks at this hospital at least pay some Girl Scouts to paint the rocks something more interesting? What about fuchsia, neon green, indigo? No wonder folks got depressed at hospitals. It was all white or drab. The place needed some serious fun.

  There was a small pop, a flash. Cassie looked down and saw she was holding the purse she’d just purchased on line.

  “Cool,” she thought. It seemed like divine providence. A Chanel bag. Hermes would have been better. She looked at the labyrinth. The rocks now were multi-colored and the entire inside of the courtyard was awash with the colors of San Antonio’s Fiesta—deep pinks and ochres. There, that was more like it. Why, if she were the chief decision maker around here, she’d have a thing or two to teach these folks about healing!

  Then there was a larger flash with more power and energy. Cassie felt it to her core. The paradigm had radically shifted except she did not understand how much because she was no longer Cassie.

  52

  The Labryinth

  The thin stranger with the stringy brown hair had her back to Cassie while she hunched on her bench and chain-smoked. Her abusive father laid up on the sixth floor and would not live to make the rest of the day. At least that‘s what everybody thought this time—once again. He’d escaped death before. Her whole family knew she and her dad didn’t get along yet they all insisted she attend the large family assembling to help daddy with his passing. Why did she, Amanda, have to be there? It irked her to no end. Nobody else had the same memories she did about dear old dad—the man who hit her for coming home too late after volleyball practice or called up her boyfriends and reamed them out.

  She sucked harder on the cigarette.

  Watching her father die was the last thing she wanted to do this Sunday. She was in the middle of repainting her small kitchen at home. She’d prefer to bring a machine gun and spray the old codger down just to speed up the process. He’d been nothing but pure bastard to her when she was growing up. The rest of the family pretended that everything was sweetness and light and refused to acknowledge her pain. That is why she usually stayed away from family functions. It had already been a rather rich experience, she thought, as she witnessed her siblings jockeyed for position thinking the old man was close to death. She’d believe it when she saw it. He probably would rise out of the grave. None o
f this really mattered. She preferred to live her life outside of the family and had decided a long time ago that staying away was the best policy.

  She felt a small pop behind her, almost like an air blast. She turned and looked around. The other lady was gone. That was fine as far. Amanda usually was a loner, anyway. The appearance of the stone maze was different, though. Then she took in the colors of the walls of the courtyard which stretched up ten floors. Now they were a sunny yellow and deep orange. Bands of stucco and pink stretched to the heavens. The rocks looked like rainbow colors. What had happened? Did a Disney creator get in here?

  Curiously, she got up and walked over to the labyrinth to enter its tracks. In the dead center of the thing lying on the gravel, was a brightly colored lavender purse with navy trim. Why was it here? She ignored the stones, stepping over them to walk in a direct line to the center to retrieve the purse.

  Looking inside she saw nothing.

  “Nice. A new purse,” she thought as she folded it up and tucked it under her arm. The leather felt superb—soft, expensive, almost alive.

  She ditched the family and got in her car. Maybe she’d check after lunch to see if dad had finally died. Or maybe not.

  Striding quickly to the parking lot, she got into her car and started it up. Next she drove to a MacDonald's nearby to get some coffee. The purse lay on her front seat. She reached over and stroked it several times. It felt well made and costly—nothing like the synthetic ones she usually bought at discount stores. She wondered if she could sell it on eBay.

  Amanda’s phone rang. One of her brothers was asking where she had gone. She lied and explained she was driving over to a gift shop since the one at the hospital was closed on Sundays. She felt the need to get dad’s fourth wife, who would be the official widow, a consolation gift, she told him.

  “Well, hurry up and get back,” her brother said gruffly.

  It was close to noon. She changed her mind and decided to do actually what she claimed she would do, so she headed over to the Lazie Daizie while sipping her coffee. Over the radio she played the music she preferred—mad rap. It was the only stuff that spoke how she felt inside most of the time. Angry and throbbing and oh-so-loud. Usually she barely spoke. To outsiders she appeared sullen, yet her mind was going a million miles a minute continuously.

  Inside of the purse, slipped inside a zippered compartment sat Cassie. She now had become a credit card—a bright shiny Visa with an ultra long expiration date and a supremely high credit rating. Embossed on the front of the card was a swirling stripe which was the exact color of Cassie’s hair. That was the only telltale sign of real Cassie, though. The card had nobody’s name but said, “The Bearer of this Supreme Gift Card will have the maximum enjoyment of spending the gifts of this card.” It had what appeared to be a legitimate account number and expiration date. Amanda discovered this card as she transferred the contents of her old purse into her new find.

  “Hello! What’s this?” She examined the special card. “What the heck?” Figuring that the world owed her one, she thought of the card as gift from the universe. She’d see what the shopkeeper at the Lazie Daisie had to say about it. Maybe she could get away with using it and if that proved to be the case, then she would go on a spending spree.

  Marching in proudly, Amanda scoured the entire store—selectively picking up items, looking them over and then putting them back. Finally she chose a handful of the most expensive items she’d come across, mostly jewelry. For her dying father’s wife, she pulled out a scarf and a porcelain dog. His wife loved trinkets. Their entire house was busting out with statutes and miniature art canvases that the woman bought on QVC.

  “It’s collectibles,” his new wife would tell visitors. Even Amanda knew it was all shit. She kept quiet. This was wife number four. She’d already been through the others. Her real mom, his first wife, had died long ago.

  Shopkeeper Annie mirrored the girl closely because she suspected she was a shoplifter. Her casual manner of dress and shoddy shoes screamed of this possibility.

  Annie still looked good and less worried since she and Greg were off that federal charge. Sure it had cost them some in lawyer’s fees and then the whole thing got suddenly dropped. Her husband had relinquished his demands she hurry up and sell the store. They both just wanted to keep a low profile.

  “Can I show you anything?” Annie asked the customer.

  “Yeah, you can quit following me around,” Amanda snarled at her. “I’m gonna pay, you know.”

  “I’ll be up front when you need me.” Annie slunk back to the cash register.

  Amanda went through the store a second time, greedily adding up in her head what all she’d spent so far. She kept putting piles, of stuff near the register.

  Annie doubted her card would clear. It wouldn’t be the first time a sketchy customer’s card failed. The other tip was that the car this girl drove was an utter bomb—an ancient copper brown LeSabre with a torn ragtop. She’d slammed that beast up against the curb, directly in front of Annie’s store. Annie wanted it gone. It sullied the front of her shop she thought with a sniff. Why did the broad have to park her nasty car near the shop‘s front entrance?

  Now Amanda stood and waiting for Annie to ring her out. The total came to $3,550. Amanda pretended to fish around in her purse. She knew exactly which flap the surprise credit card was in but wanted to drag out the paying process. Sometimes it was fun for her to make clerks squirm and wait on her. God knows she had to play like she had patience dealing with people at her temporary job at the mall kiosk.

  “Oh, here it is!” she exclaimed, producing the card and smiling overly brightly, showing every tooth in her head. She watched closely as the owner of the store who, in her opinion was a stooge, swiped the card. So far, silence and a few whirls and clicks sounded as the card went through the system.

  “Sign here,” Annie prompted, holding a tablet towards Amanda. Amanda made up a name, so she used the name of a girl she’d always hated in high school. There, done. It surprised Annie that the transaction succeeded.

  Neither one of them noticed that the credit card machine had performed a multitude mysterious flashes in blues and greens. Cassie, now a credit card, was inside the machine with the scanner traveling along her belly. The reader light emitted an energy that tickled her. She knew exactly where she was; she’d heard Annie’s voice.

  It took two trips. Amanda lugged her booty out onto the sidewalk and loaded it into the massive backseat of her car. She’d bought stuff she really didn’t need. That didn’t matter. She did a quick U-turn in the middle of the street. Now she would go shopping for real. Screw going back to the hospital. Let them take care of the details, she thought. I’m free.

  53

  It's a New Day

  Cassie’s residue coated the inside of Annie’s chip processor. Cassie waited until she and Annie were alone in the shop before she spoke out.

  “Why did you and Greg steal my laptop?” she intoned from deep inside the machine.

  Annie quaked. She knew it was Cassie. At first she twirled this way and that looking for the source of the voice.

  Cassie felt divided and split in two. Vaguely she knew that half of her still lay in the bottom of that purple purse Amanda carried with her; her other half stayed mixed in the bowels of Annie‘s credit card machine. As the day wore on, Cassie felt like her skin was being torn off—all byproduct of Amanda repeatedly using the mystery bottomless credit card.

  “Yeah Annie, I’m back!” Cassie energized herself and pulled herself out of the slit in the credit card machine. Annie’s eyes grew wider than Cassie had ever seen on a person. Now Cassie sat on the counter with her legs crossed. She looked like she meant business.

  “Come on, Annie, tell me about the laptop. I sure could use it to help with my sick son. How dare you and that asshole husband of yours lie. I can do more than claw his back, you know.”

  Annie stepped back until her spine rested against the wall.

  �
�I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pointed to the credit card machine. “What the hell were you doing with my machine?”

  Cassie leaned towards her and hissed, “Magic, Annie girl. Sheer magic.” Then Cassie leaped off of the counter.

  “You haven’t answered my question. My son. I need answers about my son. Now. Who was Greg going to see to sell my laptop to? I need to know. I need all the help I can get for my son. Sure do miss my laptop.” Annie hated the way the upper corners of Cassie’s lips snarled, revealing her eyeteeth.

  Annie stared at her. “I don’t know. It was a business acquaintance of his.”

  “Where were you flying to that day? My son is still sick. Somebody did something to his throat. He’s in the hospital. Maybe this contact of yours could give me some help, eh?”

  Cassie felt a stinging pulse coming out of her fingertips. She looked down, her hands looked radioactive with a band of red light that kept swiping up and down her digits. It was as if the scanner of the machine had gotten incorporated inside of her body. She lifted her fingertips and examined them. The scanning movement kept going—back and forth, up and down. She slipped her fingers towards Annie who cowered as two of the bands zapped towards her and surrounded her entire body.

  “You need to feel the same pain I do,“ Cassie cried. She felt the power increasing inside of her as she spoke these words, then flipped her hands, with open palms, again toward her nemesis.

  Annie felt a burning encase her entire skin. “No, please. Stop.”

  They both heard the front door open as another customer came in.

  Cassie lowered her voice. “I did nothing but try to help you.” She brought her hands down and the red light diminished. Annie relaxed. Nervously, Annie looked over at the new customer who hadn’t noticed that Annie and Cassie were having a fight.

  “Greg put me up to it,” Annie claimed, speaking so only Cassie could hear.