CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK (3 page)

With a nonexistent heart in his throat,
Mike remembered that tomorrow was trash day. How long was this
stupid dream going to last? Would he end-up in a garbage dump
somewhere?

Bunching the garbage into a big, black
sack, Tammy fastened the bag with a twist tie, then went into the
bedroom to change before she started dinner. As she unsnapped her
bra, she let out small sigh of relief. Hearing loud crackling and
thrashing noises, she jerked her head toward the kitchen. A jumble
of garbage was strewn across the kitchen floor, and in the middle
of the shredded garbage bag, laid a thrashing Mike!

Jumping from the bed, glaring down at
Mike, Tammy yelled, “What the hell are you doing, Mike? Where did
you come from? Stop that! You’re throwing garbage all over the
place!”

Mike’s now-existent heart was beating a
million miles an hour as he struggled to sit up. Potato peelings,
coffee grounds and other garbage were clinging all over him. The
chicken bag was sitting on his head, blood dripping onto his
shoulders. Looking down at his shaking hands, he swore he could see
little lumps of salt, so he wiped his hands over and over on his
garbage covered pants.

Kneeling in front of him in only her
panties, Tammy asked sarcastically, “Okay smartass, how many beers
did you have today?”

Unable to speak, white-faced, Mike sat
there, repeatedly wiping his trembling hands on his filthy
pants.

With concern, Tammy studied Mike. “You
okay, honey? You look like you saw a ghost or something. What a
mess you made in here. What’s going on anyway?” She grabbed an arm
and helped him to his feet. He stumbled off, without a word, to the
bathroom.

Cleaning himself off in the bathroom,
he saw a cockroach crawling up the wall. With a growl, he smashed
the roach so hard with his fist that he punched a hole into the
wall. He pulled his hand back with a loud, “Oww!”

From the kitchen Tammy asked, “Are you
alright, Mike? Didn’t I tell you that sitting around all winter was
going to drive you nuts? Maybe you should find a different type of
work, honey. A job where you won’t have so much spare time. Oh, by
the way, I put the chicken in the oven. Thanks for taking it out to
thaw. I’ll go ahead and cook dinner tonight if you want. I’m pretty
hungry. If we weren’t so broke we could order a pizza.” Stopping
her one-sided conversation, Tammy asked in puzzlement, “Say, where
did you get these? This is cute. Are these for me? Maybe from a
doll set?”

Mike slowly wandered back into the
kitchen. Tammy looked over at him. “Oh! You really don’t look good,
honey. Don’t you feel well?” Taking his hand, she guided him to a
chair. “Here, sit down. Maybe you just need something to eat.”
Picking up the bag of chips, she held the bag out to Mike. “Want
some potato chips?”

Mike frantically yelled, “NO! Don’t eat
those?” Snatching the bag out of her hand, he hastily stashed the
bag on a shelf. With a heavy tread, he walked to the table and sat
heavily in the chair.

“
Wow! Somebody had a bad
day, didn’t they?” Sitting wearily in his chair, Mike stared up at
the open window as Tammy said soothingly, “Hey, I’m here now.
Everything will be fine.” Reaching toward the table, Tammy asked,
“Where did you find this at anyhow? It’s cute, honey.” She held up
Grizelda’s small, blue speckled, metal cup.

Mike fell out of the chair, face-first,
in a dead faint.

Connect with Sahara Foley
at:

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/SaharaFoley

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/sahara.foley

Smashwords author profile:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/saharafoley

Blog:
http://sharafoley.blogspot.com/

Other books on
Smashwords:

Tescara

++++++++++++++++++++++++

ARTHUR MERLIN: The One and
Only

Coming out in 2014

CHAPTER ONE

“
I have no idea why you get
so adamant about this, Dr. Tober”, said a tall, thin woman, wearing
a white lab-coat and a conservative, grey pinstriped skirt with
matching expensive pumps. Arms loosely crossed against her chest,
lips pursed, she was peering down at a shorter man who had large
soft brown eyes, made even larger by the coke-bottle lenses of his
glasses.

“
As I’ve told you before Dr.
Burns,” the shorter man in a rumpled, brown suit explained
impatiently, “having multiple psychic abilities is only
theoretical. We have never found clinical proof that a person can
have multiple paranormal abilities. And the few people we have
found, with just one ability, are sad specimens,
indeed.”

“
Commander Dobie seems
perfectly satisfied with the results from William and Halvorson.”
the lady said with a trace of annoyance in her soft, cultured
voice, toying with a man’s gold wedding band threaded onto a gold
necklace around her neck. “And after all, he is in charge of the
Institute, sir.”

“
Yes, quite Doctor, as he is
so fond of reminding me.” Pushing up his glasses in irritation, he
picked up some reports and headed toward a door. “Should anyone
need me, I’ll be in my office.”

Sighing with frustration, Ruth strode
stiffly to her workstation and sat down, crossing her long,
thoroughbred legs. Picking up a gold-plated pen with manicured,
soft pink fingernails, she started doodling on a yellow legal
pad.

Another voice quietly reprimanded her
from the far corner of the room. “Ruth, you shouldn’t keep
reminding Dr. Tober about Commander Dobie. You know how upset he
becomes over bureaucrats and their paperwork.” This man was short
and round, also wearing a white lab-coat that made him resemble a
giant marshmallow. He had curly blonde hair and sparkling,
periwinkle eyes. He waddled over to her workstation and continued,
“I can understand your place here, the pressure of trying to find
the perfect specimen, when we know perfectly well that if such a
person truly existed, we’d never know of his existence.”

“
Yes, Gordy.” She agreed
with a soft, resigned sigh. “And if we did, the person would have
so much psychic power that they couldn’t possibly be controlled,
not by us anyway.”

==========

For the past half hour I’d been hanging
around, invisible, eavesdropping on the Doctors. I referred to this
trick as my ‘Almost Mode’. Learning this ability had taken weeks of
practice and resulted in some very embarrassing moments. It’s
amazing what happens when a person materializes out of thin air
among a group of people. I’ve caused ear screeching screams to
drop-dead faints and a few times even mild coronaries. Not to
mention the people who wet themselves over the smallest
provocation.

==========

“
Do you ever feel like we’re
just wasting our time here?” She was still doodling on the yellow
legal pad, looking as if she’d just lost her best
friend.

“
If I felt like that I’d
have left the Institute years ago,” Gordy confided, leaning one
round buttocks against her table top. “Think of the specimens we
have found so far. Not just Williams and Halverson, but the others
that showed one type of the phenomena or another.”

“
I know, but every year it’s
harder to obtain funding, and after twelve years, all I have to
show for our research is several hundred miles of computer tapes.”
With a slight shrug she added, “Oh, and a few tons of paperwork in
boxes that no one really cares about. This is all rather depressing
sometimes.”

Waddling to a cabinet, her lab partner
pulled out a folder. “I seem to remember a few years ago, a young
woman very excited about this man.” He plopped the manila folder on
the table in front of her.

“
But I was only twenty-two
back then, and Uri was my first contact with the phenomena.” She
explained, ignoring the closed folder.

“
Yes but certainly not your
last.” He replied, laying a comforting hand on her
shoulder.

Ruth glanced up at Gordy with a
thoughtful frown. “Do you really think it’s possible for one person
to have more than one aspect of the phenomena?”

Picking up the ignored file with stubby
fingers, he slid it back into the drawer. “Do you remember Mrs.
Holmquist?” Twirling the wedding band around on her necklace, his
unhappy co-worker nodded reluctantly. “Then you should remember,
for a brief span, how many psychic tendencies she
exhibited.”

With a sigh of exasperation, she rose
from her chair, striding gracefully over to a hot-plate and poured
steaming water into a monogrammed mug, then added a tea bag and
sugar. Talking over her shoulder, she disputed, “Yes Gordy, but she
was a fluke and you know it.”

“
Call her what you will
Ruth, but for three weeks we had our hands full with that woman.”
Gordy reminded her, following her to the hotplate.

“
I remember. I still have
the paperwork.” She took her steaming mug and returned to her
workstation, trailing behind her a faint scent of herbal tea. “But
if she never had that car crash she would never have shown any of
them,” Ruth pointed out.

“
Aha, but we don’t know that
for sure. She may have done some of her tricks for years, and never
even noticed.” Now he poured hot water into a bright-yellow
mug.

“
How could someone do
everything that Mrs. Holmquist did and never notice?” She sent him
a skeptical look as she swirled the teabag in her cup.

He poured a generous amount of sugar
into his hot water and stirred, but no tea bag. “The same way you
aren’t noticing what you’re doing with your spoon.” Gordy nodded
toward her mug.

==========

Moving over a few steps to see what the
Doctor was doing, she glanced directly at where I stood; a funny
look on her face. She had the spoon balanced on the edge of her
mug.

==========

“
Oh, this is nothing, just
an idle habit of mine.” She dismissed with an elegant wave of her
hand.

“
Precisely Ruth, just as
Mrs. Holmquist may have telekinetically opened and closed doors for
years, never paying any attention to what she was doing. If a habit
feels natural and done often, we take it for granted more often
than not.”

“
Yes, I understand what
you’re saying, but that doesn’t explain how she could move things,
start fires, even go to sleep in one place but wake up in a
different place. Sometimes so far away the journey would have been
physically impossible to make in the time allowed.” Ruth argued,
removing the teabag and dropping it into the wastebasket next to
her workstation.

“
Yes, but all of Mrs.
Holmquist’s psychic abilities occurred after her concussion from
her car crash, then after three weeks, just stopped.” Gordy
patiently reminded Ruth as he waddled back to his corner with his
steaming mug of sugar-water.

“
So, what are you saying, as
if I didn’t already know?” Ruth asked with a slight
frown.

“
I’m afraid I side with Dr.
Tober on this subject. I think we have the latent tendencies in us,
maybe not everyone, but certainly many of us, and with the right
stimulation they manifest themselves.” Ruth toyed with her spoon,
looking doubtful. Dr. Gordy continued. “And I feel strongly, as Dr.
Tober does, that out there is someone who has these and other
aspects of the phenomena. Some we may not be aware of
yet.”

==========

Right on, Doctor, I thought. That was
part of the reason I was here. I could do so many things, and this
was the place to show off my talents: The Institute of Psychic
Research, London, England.

I mentally focused on Dr. Tober’s
office, and BLIP! I teleported into the Doctor’s office.

He was looking through some reports,
papers scattered across his desk. He read on for several minutes,
unaware of my presence, though I was no longer in my ‘Almost Mode’.
He finally glanced up at me. His eyes grew bigger with surprise,
then in an instant he was under control. I guess working at the
Institute would condition you to the unexpected.

“
Ahem, uh, who are you, and
why are you in my office?” He asked nervously, peering around me,
probably trying to see if one of the Doctors had escorted me into
his office.

“
Excuse me for dropping in
Doctor, but I’m the man who called you the other day.” I
explained.

“
The American, uh, Mr.
Merlin?” He politely inquired.

“
That’s right, Doctor.
Arthur Merlin, late of the US of A.” I announced with a flourish
and a bow.

He stared at me impassively, not at all
impressed. He waved to a nearby chair. “Please sir, be
seated.”

I sat in a chair designed to get you up
and out of the office as quickly as possible. Apparently,
lollygagging isn’t allowed in Dr. Tober’s office.