“Hey! Hey, what gives man!” The clerk called after him as he left. Perhaps he had now seen the bread aisle. Richard didn’t even glance back though, he had to get going. They would be right on top of him any moment now.
As he climbed into his car, he noticed that the pump showed that $157 dollars was owed. The truck driver had no doubt pumped a full tank of diesel into his truck thinking that Richard would pay for it out of guilt. That could be why the clerk now looked as though he was phoning the police. Just another thing to worry about, Richard thought as he sped out of the station and back onto the dark road that lay before him.
As he drove, he kept glancing in his rearview to see if he was being followed, there was nothing but darkness. The road did not have any street lights, nor did it have any near by structures to offer light. Thick woods and cropland ran intermittent on both sides of the dark road.
Richard drove for perhaps another ten miles before he first saw the light. It appeared suddenly outside the passenger window of his car. At first he thought that maybe he was coming up on the intersection of some crossroad, but then the light began to gain altitude. It ascended from the level of a road and went upwards into the treetops. Soon it was high enough in the sky to be seen above the trees. It was a large pyramid shaped object that glowed white on all edges. It came across the trees and into the road in front of Richard’s car forcing Richard to shield his eyes.
Richard was astonished that he was actually bearing witness to what had to be a UFO. He leaned over and fumbled for his camera in the passenger seat. Then suddenly the car stalled out and all the lights on the dash went dark. He rolled to a stop and could only sit there while the light hovered brightly above him. Then as suddenly as it had come upon him, it flew away over the trees to his left.
The car miraculously restarted some seconds later, leaving Richard breathless in shock at what had just happened. He leaned forward trying to peer out the windshield for any sign of the light or the pyramid, but saw none. He ran a brief checklist in his head for the car and established that he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. He was just about to begin driving again, when suddenly the light appeared once more, this time directly over him. It was so intense that Richard could feel the roof of his sedan heating up. The inside of his car was suddenly like the inside of a pressure cooker. He leaned forward again to see, but the light was too intense to look directly at it.
Suddenly outside his window there was a large shadow, just outside the light. He let loose a startled shriek, and shimmied to the other side of his car, but then quickly noticed something far worse peering in at him on the other side of the car. It was human in form, but with a head almost like a bat with tentacle like objects growing from it like an octopus.
Richard screamed in terror, and then suddenly awoke in Doctor Hays’ office…
Richard awoke screaming, which made Dr. Hays spill his coffee all over the desk. Richard heard him mumbling curses under his breath as he dabbed up the hot liquid with a Kleenex tissue.
“Sorry about that,” Dr. Hays said. “You just startled me. I didn’t expect you to wake up…quite like that.”
Richard took a moment to gather himself. The dream had felt so real, just as it always did. Each time was like reliving that night over again, and then he would wake up and realize that it had been almost a year ago. The strangest thing was that he almost couldn’t remember that night any longer. It was as if it was fading from his memory with each passing day. He knew however that forgetting would mean losing something very important, something that even though it terrified him, he should remember.
He knew he needed to talk to Steven. Steven would help him sort things out, but he didn’t know where to find him.
“You had the dream again? The one about the truck driver right?”
“Not so much about the trucker as…”
“Have you remembered more?”
Richard said nothing.
“You were watching me sleep?” Richard finally asked, changing the subject.
“No not really… You see you trailed off while you and I were talking, I saw that you had closed your eyes, so I waited a moment longer to see if you would pop back up, but you didn’t. When I heard your breathing change, I figured I might have time to run and get some coffee.
He raised the mug, now half full of coffee.
“I literally just sat down when you popped up screaming. Perhaps you don’t agree, but I thought I’d give you the time to sleep. I know my office is a safe place to snooze, and I know you could use some extra winks. Don’t worry, I won’t charge you for the half hour.”
“How long was I out?”
“Coffee?” Dr. Hays looked at his watch and then to the clock on the wall. “Round trip for me, took about nine or ten minutes. I stopped and chatted with Stella for a few minutes. I’d say that you were out maybe twenty minutes tops.”
“Well…thanks, I guess for letting me doze off. Any sleep that I can get is a welcome.”
“You haven’t had any good nights here recently have you?” Dr. Hays drew his hands together tightly on his desk and stared intensely at Richard. “Are you sleeping at all?”
“It seems like I am,” Richard sighed, “Although I can’t be certain now-a-days. Nothing really feels like sleep, but I still have a problem with falling asleep mid day and I still have the memories…”
“The dreams?” Dr. Hays asked. Richard knew that the doctor was merely trying to implant what he felt was a healthier word, but somehow to Richard, he knew that he had been right with the first word. They felt more like memories than dreams.
“Is that what we were talking about?” Richard asked.
Hays picked up his glasses which were hanging from a small silver chain around his neck. He looked at the clip board in front of him.
“We talked again about your background for a bit, aside from the loose details that we’ve been able to add over the last few weeks, the only new stuff was…”
“The dream, we were talking about the dream I keep having.”
“Yes the one with the trucker, the one about the night you had your accident.”
“I was being reckless, dumb and reckless. Looking back now, I can see that, but that night I was driven to recklessness by some force that still escapes me to this day. That road couldn’t have been much more than seven or eight feet wide. It was rocky, dark, muddy, and littered with potholes. At the time I was processing everything at light-speed. I had a mission, a purpose, something that pushed back the fear and shrouded it so that I could think clearly, act intentional. Now I see it was just recklessness and nothing more.”
“Do you remember drinking?” Doctor Hays asked. “I mean that night, before the reckless driving, do you remember drinking anything at all that could have impaired your judgement?”
“No, everything was too keen, I don’t really drink, and I’ve never really been a drinker.”
“What do you think it was that was propelling you, making you drive so recklessly?”
“I can’t really remember…”
“I know, you said before that you couldn’t remember, but I had a hunch that that screaming just a bit ago, maybe had something to do with it. Do you want to talk about it? Any little detail may help paint a bigger picture.”
Richard sat there for a moment staring out of the office window to the dreary day outside, everyday seemed overcast lately. Richard could see a small playground area in the distance, something he had notice before a few times. He imagined that it was connected to a school, although he couldn’t see for sure. There were never any kids playing when he looked out at it, so it could be that the school was shut down, or the playground was for some reason condemned.
He imagined the see-saw, the jungle gym, and the little spring horses. In the midst of this he had noticed an orange springy dinosaur. They would all rust over and fade year after year, and perhaps no little kid would ever play on them again. Or maybe the mayor would put forth a new building code and when Richard returned one day there would be yellow tape strung up and men with yellow hard hats would be out pulling up the springy orange dinosaur and the jungle gym with large machinery. All that equipment for one orange dinosaur he thought.
“Richard… Richard, I said do you want to talk about it?”
Richard snapped out of his trance, even that was like awaking from a dream. It felt no different from when he slept.
“I… I can’t remember, and I don’t want to talk about it Doc…I’m sorry.”
“No..no, that’s ok, we don’t have to cover it again. I know you don’t like to talk about it. What about that screaming just now, what was that? Is that something you’d like to talk about…something you can remember?”
“I can’t remember.” Richard repeated.
“You know Richard, you can talk to me. After all that’s what you’re here for. Just to talk, and us to work together to figure out how to make things better for you. Now what do you say we pick back up with Steven. Anything you’d like to discuss there?”
“No, not really.”
“Why not?” Hays asked. “Do you feel comfortable talking about the reasons why we can’t talk about Steven? Would that be ok with you Richard?
“I guess, maybe…”
“Good. So whenever you think you’re ready, just go ahead and start. We’ll only talk about the reasons why we can’t talk openly about Steven, and then anything else that comes to mind and you feel comfortable talking about.”
“Steven is like a spy, or an intelligence officer. He knows stuff that he can’t talk about. He warns me about danger, and he warns me about…”
Richard got scared…He knew he had already said too much, and that Steven would be mad. He wasn’t supposed to even mention Steven.
“It’s ok, you can continue…” Hays urged on.
“No, I can’t. It’s not safe. This isn’t a secure location. Steven only shows up when he knows its safe.”
Dr. Hays sat for a moment in silence. He then stood up all of a sudden. He pointed to his half full mug of coffee.
“I’ll be right back,” Dr. Hays said as he took his coffee and left the room.
Richard spun around in the large office chair and stared at the door that Hays had exited from. The small office only had one other door. It was most likely a coat closet or small half bath for the Doc to use in-between clients, but Richard briefly imagined it being some secret access to a mental asylum. The doctor could just simply push some hidden button under his desk and two orderlies would burst from the door and take someone away.
Hays returned with a full cup of coffee and a yellow sheet of paper.
“Ok, Richard, I’m going to level with you. I want to remind you that our conversations and everything that takes place in this office is entirely confidential. Do you know what that means Richard?”
“You are bound by law not to speak about it to anyone unless under certain lawful methods.”
“It’s a lot like Steven’s situation, wouldn’t you think?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll take a maybe. Now do you know what this is here?” He held up the yellow sheet of paper.
“What is it?” Richard asked somewhat intrigued.
“This is next week’s lunch schedule for the cafeteria on the first floor of the clinic. It hasn’t officially been published yet. It gets printed on the yellow paper until it is finalized, and then the final version gets printed on white paper. Do you know what FOUO stands for?”
“No…” Richard was now fully engaged, there was a secrecy here, and he began to feel as though the office was perhaps a secure place after all.
“FOUO means ‘For Official Use Only’, which means that only a few individuals get to see this particular version of the schedule and that we are trusted with this confidential information. Now the reason I am bringing this to your attention is that I’d like to share information with you. I feel that because of our confidential relationship and because Steven trusts you, then perhaps I can trust you too. I’m hoping that since I can trust you, then maybe you can trust me too. I’d like to form a relationship of trust between us, and I think that the secure nature of this office allows us to share these secrets. What do you think?”
Richard didn’t answer right away, but he could not take his eyes off of the secret little yellow paper. “Ok…” He finally said.
Dr. Hays slid the yellow sheet across the desk to Richard. Richard picked it up and saw that it was a gridded sheet detailing the breakfast and lunch meals for each work day for the following week. There was chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and green beans scheduled for the following Friday.
At the top the header read Cafeteria schedule for the week of October 24-28: Unofficial copy, all meals subject to change. And then in the top right corner in blue ink, someone had stamped FOUO: not for distribution.
Richard swallowed hard, feeling as though he was holding a very important document.
“Can I have this?” He asked. “Is this my copy to keep?”
He held the paper out toward Dr. Hays, wondering if the Doctor would take it back from him or allow him to keep it.
Hay’s made a face as if deciding if Richard could be trusted with having a copy or not. “I’ll tell you what… I’ll trust you to keep that between just you and me, you can keep that as your copy. Just know that outside the walls of this office that is confidential, and I would hope that you do everything in your power not to expose it. The clinic can’t afford to allow unofficial information to be leaked out in the open.”
“You can trust me.” Richard said and then brought the paper back up so he could read it once more, then he carefully folded it six times, and put it in his left jacket pocket. He buttoned the pocket so there was no chance that the schedule could slip out.
Doctor Hays watched all of this and then after a moment he spoke.
“Now about Steven, is there anything more that you feel comfortable sharing?”
Richard sat and looked back at the Doctor for a time. He wasn’t sure where to begin.
“You’re a real person, right Doc?” Richard asked while scratching the hair under his chin like some lackadaisical zoo animal. “I guess, what I mean to say is you’re the real you right? I mean , when you’ve been through what I’ve been through…or what I think I’ve been through, you feel you have to ask. You know?”
“Yes, I think I understand, and yes I am a real person, the real me, but Richard, we’ve been over this. That night… you simply had an accident and nothing more. You are very lucky to be alive, and lucky that you didn’t kill someone else.”
“Steven doesn’t think that’s the truth. He feels that there is an entirely different story to what happened that night.”
“The version that has you waking up screaming?”
Richard nodded.
“Do you feel comfortable talking about that version?”
“It’s confidential?”
“Entirely confidential.”
“And you won’t think I’m,” Richard hesitated. “You know…”
“Insane? No Richard, I won’t think you’re insane.”
“The reason I ask if you’re a real person, is because Steven believes that there are people, walking around and posing as people, who are not really people at all.”