Fate - Chapter 2

              Moments before Henry Gains had witnessed a small goblin-like creature murder a man at the bus stop on Cherry Street, he visited a coffee shop on the opposite street of Plum.  It was called La Café Prune, and it was from this establishment that Henry Gains purchased his first cup of joe every morning.

              "Hello Henry," the young clerk said from behind the counter of the busy shop as he entered.

              "Hello Susan," Henry replied, rolling his eyes before stretching his head to the side of the crowd which itself stretched all the way to the door, and waving at the smiling clerk with a forced smile of his own.

              "Got your usual ready up here," Susan shouted, holding up a large cup of steaming cappuccino.

              "Pardon me…'Scuse me…Coming through," Henry apologized half-heartedly as he muscled his way to the front of the line. "You're a doll."  He scooped up the cup with his right hand while dropping the cost in exact change on the counter with his left and turned to make his way toward the exit.

              Susan’s face fell with disappointment.  "See you tomorrow Henry," she said.  Her head dipped forward and her gaze would hang a little lower for the rest of the day.  This was the effect that Henry Gains had on most people.

              Henry flipped his coffee-less hand up in a dismissive wave, his back still turned to the crushing clerk.  It was at that moment that something quite unusual happened to Henry Gains.  As he was nearing the exit of La Café Prune, a woman seated at a corner booth caught his eye and held it.  He stopped.  This was no ordinary stop.  When Henry Gains stopped, everything inside him ceased to function properly.  For a single instant his heart failed to beat, his lungs no longer breathed, and his legs simply refused to carry him forward.  Everything around him seemed to slow down, and he watched, in slow-motion, the woman at the corner booth with the long brown hair and the pink flower dress and the full red lips take a sip from her steaming cup.

              The instant was over and the world seemed to right itself once more, Henry thought.  His heart beat normally again, he took a deep breath, and he walked out of the coffee shop and onto the sidewalk.  He purchased a newspaper from a nearby stand and crossed to the grassy area that passed for a park between the streets of Cherry and Plum.  He sat on a bench and opened his newspaper and read about his favorite sports teams as he waited for the 7:30 bus.

              A few moments later he thought for sure he'd heard a strange whispery voice call out to someone named Sam.  He lowered his paper to investigate.  Then he lowered his jaw.



              Henry Gains let out what he would be embarrassed later to call the girliest scream he'd ever screamed or even heard screamed.  The movie Scream wished it had had such a scream.  It was the type of scream that a man-sized spider might elicit from a young girl, having just surprised her in her bedroom at night.  The scream had its own email address, Amazon wish list, and Facebook account.  It was the scream that the men and women on and around the streets of Cherry and Plum would tell their children and grandchildren about someday.  It really was a fantasticly bloodcurdling scream of pure unfiltered terror…

              The folks at the bus stop, having just witnessed a man hit by the very bus for which they'd been waiting and let out their own lesser screams and gasps, swiveled around as one at the sound of Henry's wail, including the little pug-faced goblin-thing.

              Henry's gaze was fixed on the creature which was now looking right back at him.  Upon noticing this fact, the pug began hopping first to the left, and then to the right.  Henry's eyes followed it, and it was now the creature's turn to wear Henry's look of shock.  It stopped bouncing and slowly, shyly, the little pug put up its pudgy hand, and waved.

              Henry, eyes still wide, mouth still open, waved back.

              The pug let out a surprised shrill shriek, hopped into the air, and ran away down the sidewalk at an incredible speed.

              The people standing at the bus stop watched Henry wave to them, and some of them waved back awkwardly, sure that the man was absolutely insane.  They returned to feeling dreadfully sorry for the man who'd just been nearly decapitated by a Volvo B10M bus.

              The woman driving the bus that hit poor Sam Welty was on her cell phone sobbing to 911 to please hurry and that there'd been a terrible accident.  She was exactly right to do so, but of course Sam Welty was already quite deceased.

              Henry's eyes had tried to follow the pug's speedy path down the sidewalk.  He'd lost track of it, but as he searched the street, shapes began to come into view as if he'd just awoken and his eyes were filled with sleep and everything was blurry.  As he rubbed his eyes and blinked, the shapes became more distinct until finally he recognized what he was seeing.  No less than four of the pug-faced creatures were scampering on their merry way and checking their peculiar little watches as if they each had important meetings to attend.



              The next 39 minutes saw Henry Gains interrogated relentlessly by a police officer.  Well, at least that's how it felt to Henry. In reality the conversation went something like this:

              Police Officer:  "Excuse me sir, I understand you became extremely emotional after the accident.  Did you know the man?"

              Henry:  "No."

              Police Officer:  "I see, well can you tell me exactly what you saw?"

              Henry:  "He fell."

              Police Officer:  "…I see.  Okay, well thank you for your time."

This entire exchange took somewhere close to one minute, leaving the next 38 for Henry to sit on his bench in the grassy area between streets Cherry and Plum with his face buried deep into his newspaper such that his eyes, even peripherally, could not attempt to fool him again with images that could not possibly be real.  When his cell phone rang he did not answer.  When passersby inquired about his well-being, he grunted at them in a way that clearly meant "I'm fine, go away."

              Finally, gathering his courage, Henry lowered his paper with shaking hands.

              There we are.  See Henry, everything will be just fine.  Nothing horrible has happened.  Now go on… Open your eyes, thought Henry.

              Mr. Henry Gains, for the first time in more than half of an hour, opened his eyes to the world beyond his newspaper.  He quickly shut them again, began shaking his head back and forth, and mumbled "No. No. No. No."

              This is what he saw:  Every passing human had one of two things that they should not have had.  The first was an arrow -- Not a bow-and-arrow arrow, but a directional arrow.  The second was a sideways numeral eight, or as Henry would soon realize, an infinity sign.  Both of these symbols were about the size of a bowling ball, varying in color from a bright red to a deep purple, and hovering three inches above everyone's head looking very much like something out of a computer game, except it wasn't a computer game.  It was Henry Gains' actual real normal everyday life, and people did not have icons above their heads in normal everyday life.  In addition to this new development, Henry also saw at least two more of the pug-faced murderous goblin-things hopping along the sidewalks of Cherry Street, checking their wristwatches, and looking altogether too cheerful considering the fact that Henry had just seen one of them kill a man in cold blood

              Henry thought to himself, Think Henry, Think.  There has to be a reasonable explanation here.  He retraced his steps in his mind.  I woke up, I got dressed, nothing unusual.  I got my morning coffee.  I got my paper.  His mind jumped back a step.  The coffee!  He thought.  That little bitch put something in my coffee!

              Susan, the clerk behind the counter of La Café Prune, was not, in fact, a little bitch, and she was quite hurt and confused when the enraged Henry Gains stormed into the coffee shop making that very accusation.

              "I-I don't know what you mean," Susan said, a tremble in her voice.

              Mr. Gains was not born yesterday and he made this fact immediately clear.  "I wasn't born yesterday," he said.  "I know you slipped something in my coffee this morning.  What was it?  LSD?  Was it PCP?  God only knows the acronyms you kids are peddling these days."

              Susan was not an acronym peddler.  She'd never even used an acronym.  Okay, so she'd texted the occasional "l-o-l" and "b-r-b", but she was almost positive Henry was referring to something very different, and much more sinister.  She was feeling cornered and confused and so she did what she does in these types of situations.  She cried.

              Henry laughed.  It was a sardonic and unsympathetic laugh.  "Don't think your sobbing bit is going to work on me missy," he said.

              "Excuse me sir," said a voice from behind him.

              Henry, mistaking the voice for another customer, said "hold on a minute," and held his hand up in the dismissive gesture of which he was quite fond.

              "I'm the manager of this establishment.  What seems to be the trouble here, sir?" the voice continued, perturbed.

              Henry swung around to face this new villain.  "Well Jim," he said sarcastically, reading the nametag on the front of the coffee shop manager's prim purple vest.  "Your employee," he stressed the word employee as though it were an insult, "slipped some kind of hallucinogen into my coffee this morning!"

              Jim looked around Henry to the still-sobbing Susan and asked, "Is this true Susan?"

              "Of course it isn't!"  Susan said, still crying.

              "Sir, this is a very serious accusation.  Do you have any evidence to back up your claim?"  Jim said to Henry who was now staring at Susan with a mixture of contempt and distrust.

              "Well…" Henry faltered, trying to think.  "I came into the coffee shop.  She," he indicated Susan with a sideways jerk of his head, "had already prepared my usual order so I came up front, paid for it, took it, and lef…"  A thought occurred to Henry just then that he immediately felt should have done so sooner.

              "Is that all then?"  The manager asked, confused.  "What makes you think that Susan put something in your drink?"

              Henry flapped his hand up and down in the direction of the manager as if he were shooing away a troublesome child.  "No, no," he said, paying little attention to the manager as the cogs of his mind turned faster.  "That woman," he continued, pointing toward the corner booth at which he'd seen the woman earlier.  "The one who was sitting there when I came in, who was she?"

              "I'm sorry sir, I don't know," the manager said with more than a hint of exasperation.

              "J-J-Jessica," Susan said.  "She just moved here from New York."

              "Jessica what?  Did you get a last name?"  Henry asked with a slight shake of his head.

              "No, but she did mention that she had an interview with some big law firm today."

              This was good news for Henry who was quite familiar with the law firms of the city, being a lawyer himself.  "Which firm?"

              "I-I can't remember exactly, something like Garfunkle and Grouch,"

              "Garfield and Grout," Henry said, mostly to himself.  "Alright, thanks," and then as an afterthought, "oh, and uh… Sorry about that stuff with the drugs and whatnot."