Vertical Descent Point. PART 4

The assailant, whose name was Edwin Thompson, was hurled from the site of a particularly horrific mass murder in the most squalid hell hole of Darfur to the end of a cul-de-sac called Amber Lane, where his eyes fell upon a stooped man in faded overalls who walked with a listless and slightly pained gait up a crumbling walk and to the front door of a humble Cape Cod. The house was small and eggshell white and was framed by twin rose bushes.

“Dad,” Edwin whispered under his breath. “Dad, what…?”

As Edwin watched, he felt an impossibly ancient man in a trench coat stir somewhere just beyond his vision, heard him muttering low and hard, his hand still upon Edwin’s forehead within some point along the endless twisting line of time and space. His voice was melodious and had an arrogant cadence to it, as if he watched from some clever perch high above the scene of the world, maybe on the verge of having a snide laugh at the foolish and tawdry lives of human beings, creatures who were so far beneath him. Edwin felt like a speck of single-celled scum on the bright slide of the ancient man’s consideration.

Edwin watched his father come to a stop, hunchbacked before the front door of the Cape Cod, which seemed out of its element here in the backwoods slum of the south. His father poked a finger into the circle of soft orange light that was the doorbell and waited. In his free hand was a small black tray with aluminum foil folded over the top. Atop the foil sat a shiny red apple and a tiny carton of orange juice.

The man poked the doorbell again after a moment of silence. Edwin began to moan. “No, Dad,” he murmured, clutching his mouth with his right hand, which shook in the calm of the day. “No.”

The front door of the Cape Cod opened with surprising force and a deep voice yelled "WHAT THE F**K IS THIS, CHARLENE, ROBBING THE GRAVE, FOR CHRISTSAKE?" A large hand twisted itself into the folds of the old man's coat and yanked him across the threshhold. The front door closed with a dry snap.

Low screams pierced the world beyond the Cape Cod’s front door. No one other than Edwin seemed to hear a thing.

It would be in all the local papers. It had even made top story status on CNN.

Meals-On-Wheels volunteer gone missing. Meals-On-Wheels volunteer still missing, week four. Meals-On-Wheels volunteer, Mr. Jimmy Thompson, 56 years old, of Ellis Avenue, found dead on the east bank of Shining Lake.

Edwin tried to scream his misery into the world, but nothing escaped his mouth except a wheezy gust of spittle-coated terror. He felt helpless, completely, undeniably helpless. There was nothing for it but to watch and listen and fear. He knew that he was helpless and would be forevermore. There hadn’t been anything he could’ve done to save his elderly father, who had found a young woman named Beverly Willis (Edwin’s mother, twenty years his father’s junior)to his liking one night over a couple of Long Island Ice Tea sips in Henderson’s, the local tavern that drew both rich and poor, white-collar and blue-collar, into its doors with the smell of something like relief.

Edwin, a problem child from the start, Edwin, who had been caught on his knees and at his father’s worn slack pockets on more than one occasion, Edwin, who had shoved his father so hard while in the throes of an argument about the idiocy of smoking pot that his father had stumbled and crashed through the living room coffee table. He’d come to with a fractured hip. Edwin, who had run away from home five times, which hadn’t done the old man’s heart any good at all.

Edwin, who had screamed his groundless, childish hate and frustration into his father’s sad and wrinkled face on more than one occasion.

“You’re a waste of flesh, you old dogfaced m**********r! A waste of goddamn space! Look at the life you’ve given me! Look at it! You’re nothing! NOTHING!”

Never a chance to apologize, never a chance to say ‘I didn’t mean it, Dad, I’m just so angry all the time, I’m sad and terrified and half out of my mind with self disgust and I don’t know what I’m going to do’…no, instead, he’d driven his father into a pathetic extracurricular activity, Meals-On-Wheels, to be murdered in the fall of three years ago by a stranger driven to murder by ceaseless jealousy and rage.

He’d done it; he had killed his own father. He may as well have pulled the trigger and plowed the top of his father’s sweet head off himself.

“No,” he moaned, on his knees in the past. “I didn’t mean to be this. I don’t want this.”

“A lesson in past suffering?” inquired a grim voice that was thick with phlegm.

Quite suddenly, Edwin was on the street in a fetal position at the feet of three strangers, the people he had tried to rob an eternity ago.

The old (ancient) man who stood to his right smiled and offered him a gnarled hand.

“There’s been enough suffering in your life, boy. Let’s put an end to it and turn over a new leaf, huh?”

The woman with the tattooed face, who stood to his left, frowned and fingered the right pocket of her windbreaker. “I should’ve smeared him into something that couldn’t survive above sea level.”

Edwin looked down at his chest and saw a pair of dark breasts there. They were quite full and rather lovely. He had to admit that, even in his shock.

“I’ll take them away when you’re done, Old,” the woman said.

Edwin allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

The fat man standing in front of him, beside the ancient man, laughed and pointed at Edwin's perky new breasts.
 

Reviews

[Dms]

Lol. I am starting to get their super powers. Tatoo reminds me of an old twilight zone episode I saw when I was a kid where a woman could make her paintings real by signing them. In the end, she dumped paint thinner on one of herself and signed it. THE END.

[Hairy and Confused]

Cool! Now that's an interesting special power, telekinetic breast transferral.

[Inda Lauryn]

Wow. Almost like HEROES but without the comic book aspect. Interesting twist that took.