John Swinburn

Allen Sherman loved his mother. Her maiden name was Achtung. She was of Prussian ancestry, though she was loathe to admit it. She preferred to tell lies, claiming Scottish lineage on her mother’s side, with a direct line to nobility that predated the Viking invasions. No one believed her, of course, not even Allen Sherman. But he never confronted  Jameestaqueezia Sherman with his doubts about her heritage because there was no reason to do so. Not until rumors of a new cleansing started to circulate. But by then, Jameestaqueezia had manufactured enough fake genealogical evidence of her ancestry to make its denial highly suspect.

Allen tried to persuade her to stop the charade, even before the authorities began their inquiries. “Mother, something’s afoot. I’m afraid this anti-Scottish sentiment is getting out of hand. I’m concerned your assertions about your Scottish ancestry will get you in trouble.”

“Assertions? They’re not assertions. They’re statements of fact! And, anyway, this anti-Scottish nonsense will pass quickly. These things always do.”

“Not always, Mother. Look at what happened to the Argentinians. They rounded them up and put them in camps and deported them. It was just like World War II and the Japanese. Except it was worse. There’s not a soul of Argentinian ancestry in this entire country now.”

“Well, that was different. Scottish ancestry is not like Argentinian ancestry. With the likes of Perón and Videla in that country, it’s a wonder they didn’t deport them all much earlier.”

“Mother, that is such a bigoted attitude! And I’m serious about talking about your Scottish ancestry. If you keep up with your proclamations about how proud you are to have pre-Viking Scottish ancestors, they’re going to show up at the door one day and cart you off!”

Jameestaqueezia Sherman, nee Achtung, was having none of Allen’s fear-mongering. She continued to proudly announce her noble lineage to anyone who would listen. But two weeks after Allen’s entreaty, she responded to a knock at the door.

A tall uniformed man, his face dull and emotionless, stood at the door. “Are you Jameestaqueezia Sherman?”

“I am. Who wants to know?”

“I am Captain Enrique Squalor with the U.S. Genealogical Cleansing Service. I’m here to escort you to the deportation barge.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“We have evidence that you are of Scottish ancestry and, furthermore, that you have expressed pride in your scurrilous connection to that land whose only claim to fame is the Highland Potato Famine of the middle nineteenth century. You’re being taken to the Scottish deportation barge, which will be escorted to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and released.”

“There must be a mistake. My maiden name is Achtung. Actually, I am of Prussian stock.”

“That’s not what you’ve been telling your neighbors, Mrs. Sherman. And that’s not what the documents you’ve filed with the Orleans Parish Genealogical Authority say. Come with me.”

The Scottish deportation barge was a large, flat, open-air vessel with no railings. Sixty-four hundred eye-hooks, thick and  eighteen inches apart, were affixed to the deck. Jameestaqueezia and sixty-three hundred and ninety-nine other Scottish deportees, rounded up from as far away as Port Arthur, Texas and Springfield, Missouri, were chained to the eye-hooks. When the barge was fully loaded with its human cargo, an enormous tugboat pushed it away from dockside and steered it down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. Once in the open Gulf, the tug pulled around the front of the barge. Captain Enrique Squalor, aided by his newly-hired Lieutenant, Allen Sherman, attached thick cables to the barge. When the cables were firmly affixed, the Captain steered the monstrous tug southeast.

As the pair of vessels slipped around the southern coast of Florida a day and a half later, the coastline was visible in the distance. It was the last time the deportees would see land. Four days later, drenched with salt water and burned by the sun, the deportees watched Captain Squalor and his Lieutenant disconnect the cables.

“You’re just going to leave us out here?!” Jameestaqueezia, shouting at her son, shook her fist in his direction.

Allen Sherman stared at her and nodded.

“It takes guts, boy, to do your duty when it’s family.” Captain Squalor put his hand on Allen’s shoulder.

“If only she’d have stopped the charade of Scottish ancestry long ago, Captain, this whole thing could have been avoided.”

“Yeah, son, this could have been a much brighter day. But she made her bed. The lot of them did.”

Ten years later, almost to the day, both the Argentinian and the Scottish deportations were ruled unconstitutional. And a year after that, Captain Enrique Squalor and Lieutenant Allen Sherman were hanged after being convicted of sixty-four hundred counts of the crime of mass murder by neglect. The U.S. Attorney General had opted not to pursue charges against them for their subsequent involvement in the Peruvian and French deportations.

“Carvings. Wood carvings. That’s what they are. For a moment, I thought they were paintings. From a distance, it’s hard to see that the pieces are three dimensional. Have you ever done any wood carving? I used to, when I was a kid, but that’s obviously been years ago. I’m afraid I’d slice my hand off if I tried it today.” Alabaster Peal grinned and looked up, as if he were remembering a particular time when he nearly cut his hand off.

Both Alabaster Peal and Speck Masters kept up the pace of walking while they—mostly Albaster—talked, passing by shops and galleries at a rapid clip.

Speck could barely contain his annoyance with his sidewalk companion’s constant banter. His eyebrows worked up and down in parallel with the repeating sneer of his upper lip.  You didn’t even pause long enough to breathe after asking me a question and then moved on without waiting for an answer.

“Hey, Peal, you up for a beer? There’s a nice little beer cellar middle of the block ahead.” Speck managed to slip in the sentence when Alabaster had to stop long enough to breathe. Both of them kept up the pace of walking while they talked, passing by shops and galleries at a rapid clip.

“Lord, no. Didn’t I tell you the doctor said I need to lose a good thirty pounds? Beer’s how I got this damnable pot belly. I used to drink three or four a day, but no longer. I’m on an exercise regimen, too. I have to credit Nancy for keeping me honest about it, too, as she’s always kept up with me as far as the beer drinking goes. But she doesn’t gain an ounce. But she’s agreed to stop with the beer, too, as long as doc says I need to lay off it. Speaking of weight, looks to me like you could stand to use a few pounds, Speck.”

By the time Alabaster finished his response, they were in front of the Sixth Estate Tavern and Speck had heard quite enough from his friend of forty years, whom he had not seen in ten. Speck did not bother responding, nor saying a word to his friend. He simply veered left, opened the door to the Sixth Estate, walked inside.

***

Alabaster, whose declining peripheral vision had worsened in the past year, did not notice Speck’s absence until he realized he’d not gotten a response from Speck. Alabaster stopped, turned around, and stared in the direction from which he came. He slowly retraced his steps and stopped in front of the Sixth Estate Tavern. Peering in the front door, he saw Speck sitting at the bar, a glass of brown liquid in front of him.

Alabaster stood in the doorway and called out to his friend.”Speck, didn’t you hear me say I didn’t want a beer?”

“I heard you. I heard you too damn much. I needed a break from you running your damn mouth.”

“Well goddamn, Speck! Aren’t you the diplomat?! If you were so damn tired of me running my mouth, why didn’t you just say so?”

“Peal, I haven’t seen you in ten years and one of the first things you say to me is to tell me I’m fat?”

“Well, which is it, Speck? Are you upset with me running my mouth or are your feelings hurt because I stated the obvious?”

“Why don’t you just go for your speed-walk? Get rid of those thirty pounds of beer-fueled fat while I enjoy some peace and quiet and an oatmeal stout. I’ll see you back at the house when I’m good and ready.”

The bartender, who had been watching and listening to the exchange between the two men, entered the fray. “Gents, do you mind having your conversation either inside or outside?”

Looking toward Alabaster, the bartender said, “You’re blocking the way for paying customers trying to get in to buy a little winter padding.”

“All right, then,” Alabaster said, “I’ll leave you here to drink yourself happy, pal. Maybe Nancy and I ought to find another place to stay for the night. Obviously, you find the two of us hard to swallow. If you’d said that from the start we would have just got a motel. We thought you’d want to see us after ten years. After all those years of being friends, I thought we’d hit it off like we’d never missed a beat. But I guess I’m the—”

The bartender cut him off. “Sir, can you please move out of the doorway? I’ve got to pay the bills.”

Alabaster, his face flushed and sweat beading on his brow, stomped his left foot. “All right, goddamn it! I’m leaving. Speck, I’ll leave you a hundred on the bed for last night’s lodging!”

Alabaster stormed out the door.

The bartender shuffled toward Speck. “Listen, pal, I’m sorry if I offended you or your friend, but—”

“No apology needed. He’s been this way for forty years. I could tolerate it for the first thirty and I’ve not seen him for ten. But I can’t tolerate it any longer.”

Speck pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He punched an image on the screen and the phone lit up and began making tones. The audible ring of the phone was interrupted with ‘Hello?’

“Honey, I just had a little flare up with Alabaster. He’s on his way home to get Nancy. They’re going to leave; he’ll find a motel for the night.”

“Thank god.  If I had to spent another night listening to Nancy drone on about Alabaster’s quest to lose thirty pounds, I think I’d strangle her.”

Lina Lindström’s career in criminal forensics exposed her to what can arise from bungling, blind rage. At the same time, though, she witnessed outcomes created through careful planning and precise execution. Though both approaches led to murder, she often was impressed with the creativity behind the latter.  It was one such creative homicide—one she finally “solved” but the solution for which was impossible to prove—that sparked Lina’s interest in telekinetics and, in particular, telekinetic physicality.

A wealthy and seemingly well-adjusted Swedish high-tech entrepreneur died when his car suddenly veered into the guard rails of the Svinesund Bridge, ultimately diving into the Svinesund Sound below. The bridge crosses the Idde Fjord, separating the Swedish municipality of Strömstad from the Norwegian municipality of Halden. Data from the car’s computers revealed that the car’s accelerator was pressed to the floor shortly after the vehicle passed through the customs and toll stations on the Swedish side. About mid-way across the bridge, the car’s steering wheel turned sharply to the right, thrusting the car into the guard rails. The vehicle did not immediately cross over the rails but, rather, it climbed part way up and continued heading toward the Norwegian side for several hundred feet before it finally went over the top of the railing and plunged into the sound below, killing the driver instantly. The man behind the wheel, Christian von Karlsson, was driving his new Koenigsegg Regera, a “hypercar” made in Swedish by Koenigsegg Automotive AB. During Lina Lindström’s investigation into von Karlsson’s death, she discovered that the man had paid nearly $2 million in cash for the car just a week before he died. An extensive investigation into the car itself—early suspicions centered on the idea that vehicle malfunctions were responsible for the tragedy—revealed no mechanical failures that could have caused the accident. Attention then turned to the driver’s state of mind. Again, the investigation came up empty-handed. Christian von Karlsson was rich, successful, happy, intelligent, good-looking, athletic, compassionate, and a philanthropist, to boot. The authorities, though, could not find it in themselves to say his death was simply an unfortunately accident. They decided, without any supporting evidence, that von Karlsson’s death could be nothing other than an unexpected and utterly unpredictable suicide. When her superior told her the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority decided to close the investigation and say the man took his own life, Lina Lindström was outraged.

“What bit of evidence did they find that could possibly support such a conclusion? There is absolutely nothing to suggest the man killed himself! I will not accept this! It’s just a bungling bureaucracy’s idiotic way of saying ‘we don’t know what happened.’ Rather than admit it, they lay blame on the poor man for his own death.”

Lars Eklund probably knew it was pointless to try to calm her down, but he tried, nonetheless. “Lina, we have no control over their decisions. We simply conduct the investigation at their request. All we can do is to conduct our forensic assessments and give them the results. It’s up to them to decide how to interpret what we tell them.”

“Well, then, they need find some new interpreters! Obviously, they don’t know what they’re doing over there. Okay. I know I’m off the investigation, officially. But I am sure you will not mind if I continue to explore it on my own time, right?”

“Lina, I know I could not stop you if I tried. But you must understand any efforts you make will be strictly on your own time. Not a minute while you’re on duty. And if you find anything of consequence, you are to bring it only to me and no one else. Are we clear?”

Lina nodded. She knew Lars needed to believe he was in charge.

Lina learned that von Karlsson’s new wife of six months, Elizabeth Broden, stood to inherit his entire quite considerable estate. Broden, an American woman who had lived with von Karlsson for three years before their marriage, had become a Swedish citizen just two months before her husband’s death. The woman, a celebrity in her own right, played a part in the Swedish television series Modus. Five weeks after von Karlsson’s death, on a Saturday morning, Lina called Elizabeth Broden.

“Ms. Broden. I’m Lina Lindström. You may know that I was involved in the investigation of your husband’s tragic death. Though the investigation is officially closed, I’d like to ask you a few questions about your husband. Would you be willing to meet with me this morning, if you have time?”

Lina waited for Broden’s response. It seemed to Lina that the pause was a little too long, but she waited.

“Uh, sure, I’m willing to meet you. I have a lunch appointment, but I will be here until just before noon. I assume you have my address?”

“That would be great. Yes, I know where you are. I can be there in a hour, if that’s all right.”

“I’ll be here. See you in an hour.”

Lina couldn’t tell from the front of the house that someone very rich lived in the nondescript, modest-looking house. It looked plain, ordinary. Just another middle-income-earner house on a plain, middle-income street. She strode up the walkway to the front porch, slipped off her shoes, and rang the doorbell.  It swung open almost immediately.

“You must be Ms. Lindström. I’m Elizabeth Broden. Come in.”

“Thanks for allowing me to take a few minutes of your time this morning, Ms. Broden.  I promise I’ll be brief.”

Broden waved her arm, inviting Lina to come in. Lina entered, then let Broden lead the way from the foyer to a large room directly in front of the entry. Though the floors looked like polished wood, the clicking sounds of Lina’s heels revealed they were wood-look ceramic. Expensive, Lina mused.

“We can sit there,” Broden said, motioning to a large teak table, sleek and clean-lined, surrounded by eight teak chairs. The upholstery, vibrant abstract red and green splashes, paired well with the chairs’ polished wood frames, giving the ensemble an air of rich sophistication. The wall of glass on the other side of the table, Lina observed, was not a solid wall but a set of doors that could be folded, opening the room to the stone and wood deck and lush garden beyond.

“You have a lovely home,” Lina said, glancing around the room at a half-dozen large abstract paintings. “I love the artwork.”

“Thank you. I dabble in oils and acrylics.”

“They’re yours? Such talent! And such excellent taste! Just like mine.” Lina smiled broadly. There was a time she would have covered her smile with her hand to hide the very large diastema between her two front teeth; she now considered it part of her trademark beauty. She was no longer unable to admit she was very attractive.

“You’re too kind. Though I’m glad to know someone else shares my taste. Now, what can I do for you?”

“First, let me express my condolences on the death of your husband, Ms. Broden. It’s tragic to lose someone so talented and so generous, especially so young.”

“Thank you. It still hasn’t completely sunk in. You said you had questions even though the investigation is closed. I think you—or is it they?—got it wrong. I don’t believe for a minute my husband committed suicide. He was too happy, too focused on the future, too—” She  stopped, as if searching for the right word.

“Yes, my questions have to do with the conclusions of the investigation. I question its outcome, as well. That’s why I’d like to ask a few questions.”

“Okay.”

“Well, first, tell me about him. Tell me what kind of man he was.”

Broden sighed and leaned forward. She put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands together.

“He was driven. Passionate. He thought he was making progress toward technological solutions to world hunger. Water shortages. He was convinced technology would make war obsolete. And he thought technology would finally relieve the world of its dependence on religion for ‘salvation.’ God, I could go on and on about how utterly sure he was that technology, his technology, was the lifeblood of the future.”

Lina nodded as Broden spoke. When Broden paused, Lina forced herself to remain silent. She had learned that silence was not an empty space to be filled, but a lode of rich ore to be mined.

THERE WILL BE MORE. JUST NOT RIGHT THIS MOMENT.

His birth certificate read “Fracas Edward Schlattery, Jr.”  According to the document, he was born to Lisa Starling Schlattery, age twenty-six, and Micah Delfino Schlattery, age twenty-three. Fracas Corbett didn’t  wonder who his namesake might have been until he reached his late twenties. He couldn’t ask his birth parents, as he was given up for adoption when he was just a few months old. They had died in a train derailment while he was still a toddler. His adoptive parents, Alex and Jolene Corbett, also died, oddly enough, in a train derailment when Fracas was away at college.  A few years after their death, when diagnosed with Gaucher disease, Fracas developed an interest in his ancestry. The doctor’s follow-up to his diagnosis prompted the interest.

“Do your parents exhibit any symptoms characteristic of Gaucher disease?”

“My parents? They’re dead.  Are you suggesting I might have caught it from them?”

“No, it’s not a disease you catch. It’s a disease you inherit.  It’s an autosomal disorder. You received the Gaucher gene from both your parents. They both were at least carriers and one or both of them possibly had the disease themselves. Did they exhibit symptoms while they were alive?”

Fracas shifted in his chair, sorting through his confusion. “Oh, I was thinking my adoptive parents. I don’t know about my birth parents. They died when I was a baby.”

The doctor explained in detail that Fracas’ relative paucity of symptoms was a good sign, but he recommended enzyme replacement therapy, or ERT, nonetheless.

“It’s in your best interests to undergo ERT. While there’s no guarantee, it’s quite likely that ERT will keep you essentially asymptomatic. I see from your chart you’re not married. Are you engaged or are you in a relationship?”

“Neither. Not at the moment. Why?”

“As I said, Gaucher disease is inherited. If you were to have children with a woman who either has the disease or is a carrier, your children would have the disease. So before you get involved with a woman to the extent that you might have children, I strongly suggest she be assessed for the disease.”

“You mean before I have sex with someone, I should check their genes?”

“Well—yeah. That’s pretty much it. Otherwise, you risk fathering a child who has your disease. And while you have few symptoms, and they’re quite mild, your child could have much more severe symptoms.”

Fracas was not planning on having children. Ever. But he wanted to know more about the people who gave him the disease. And he wondered who they had in mind when they named him “junior.”

Even with the help of the volunteer leader of the Westchester County Genealogical Society, Fracas found nothing about either of his birth parents. They couldn’t even find death certificates, though they did find a single newspaper article about a train derailment around the time they died; the article mentioned that two people, names and ages unknown, died in the crash. It was almost as if they had not existed.

Nor did they find information about any other Fracas Edward Schlattery. His own birth certificate was the only evidence of the name. As he was leaving the genealogy office, he overhead the woman who had helped him ask another volunteer, “Who the hell names their kid Fracas?” Who, indeed.

As is the case with virtually everything I write, I have no idea where this is going. It’s probably going no place. As with virtually everything I write.

Listen carefully to the voice in your head. Listen to its tenor and timbre as it urges you to consider or reconsider aspects of your life you thought had long since been settled. You may not even hear it if you’ve closed your mind to transformative change. If you have accepted raw imperfection and an aching in your heart that will never diminish, you may not want to open your heart to possibilities.

If you’ve accepted a path riddled with  sharp thorns and stones—and holes that will only sprain your ankles—perhaps you would rather not listen to the pleas of that voice. But if you’re ready to fight hard against a lifetime of treading the same painful path—if you’re willing to risk broken bones as you jump forward in pursuit of a new route to relevance—you must listen to that voice. You must give it the freedom to speak out, ever louder, and to to call to you to reach for impossibly hard and distant dreams.

I am not here to tell you to go in one direction or another. But I caution you: if you decide today to stay with the endless path of dissatisfaction you follow, you will never again be given the opportunity to follow a new road. Today, you must decide to either reach for all life can offer or settle for what will surely be a growing aching in your gut, telling you you’ve missed the point of living. If you make no decision today, you will have made an irrevocable decision; the decision to fester and wither and sink deeper and deeper into a quagmire from which there is no escape. The choice is yours.

With those words, “Reverend” Stratford Cole submitted his bid for the lives of people who would either become his followers or enemies he would dispatch in order to protect his growing power and material wealth.

Lina awakened me. I felt her two fingers tiptoe up and down my back, one on each side of my spine. She tread gently at first. With restrained but increasing pressure, she ensured that I was aware of her presence. When she was sure I was awake, she gently massaged the base of my skull, just above my neck. I rolled over to look at the clock. Eight-thirty already; I’d overslept. Normally, she would have roused me from my slumbers two hours earlier, but she must have known how badly I needed the extra sleep. I put my hands on her shoulders and began to rub them, but she squirmed a bit, her way of saying “not now.”

“Ah,” I said to myself, “she must be in a meeting. Sometimes her meetings run a bit long.”

That’s one of the problems with living nine time zones apart. Aside from the lack of a traditional affectionate relationship, distance removes the typical physical elements of one’s interactions. Though I consider myself quite progressive and receptive to concepts that challenge my knowledge of and experience with the world, Lina exceeds my receptivity. She actively embraces ideas I find, or found, very hard to swallow. Psychokinetic physicality, for example. That’s how we touch one another. I live in a 1940s ranch in suburban Omaha, Nebraska. Lina lives in a mid-century modern near Sörfjärden that backs up to the water in the Swedish municipality of Nordanstans. She has lived on or near the Bothnian Sea her entire life. I don’t know how long that is, though. I’ve never asked her age. I assume she is younger than I, but I can’t put my finger on just why I think that’s the case. Perhaps it’s because she seems so open to ideas I find hard to accept.

I met Lina through an online forum. I stumbled upon it as I explored means of euthanasia. My eldest great uncle, Uncle Scrawl Lee, was in horrific pain, around the clock. His mouth cancer had spread throughout his body and there was no possibility of cure or even remission. Uncle Scrawl had lived with me for five years. During those years, his body failed him and I found myself spending more and more time trying to make him comfortable as his body shut down. His pain affected me. Nothing seemed to diminish it. Not morphine, not sleeping pills, nothing. I felt obliged to find a way to allow him to rid himself of the agony.

When Uncle Scrawl could still talk and be easily understood, he had said, “Clap, if I am in excruciating pain and there’s nothing to be done, please find a way to end it for me. Be merciful, I beg you. Taking my life will be the most generous gift you could possibly give me.”

I had to do the research surreptitiously, inasmuch as euthanasia is considered blasphemy and a sin against God in Omaha. So I conducted my online searches from a public computer in an Omaha public library. That’s where I met Lina. She had written in a euthanasia forum that her mother had requested euthanasia when the pain of her disease became too much.

In a private message Lina sent from the forum, she explained it to me.

“Swedish doctors generally refuse to participate in euthanasia, but the practice is not illegal. I had to find someone to assist. I found a woman who said she could use telekinetic practices to anesthetize my mother and then simply telekinetically squeeze certain arteries and blood vessels to restrict the flow of blood to her brain. She said the process would painlessly lead to my mother’s death. And it worked. That’s when I became intrigued by telekinetic physicality.”

I was skeptical at first, but Lina talked me through it. “Clap, I’ve told you. With my mother, it was absolutely painless. It will be so with your uncle. If you sense even a modicum of pain in him, I will stop instantly. You will be in total control.”

Her soothing words and absolute assurances assuaged my doubts and my fears. When the  time came, she did the work.

“Uncle Scrawl,” Lina said via video Skype, “I want to be sure you are certain. Do you want to slip away from this pain? All of it?”

I had explained the process to Uncle Scrawl.

“Yes, Lina, I want to go. Please, do it quickly.” He spoke clearly and with conviction, despite difficulty speaking.

“You understand, Uncle Scrawl, this is permanent. It is irrevocable. Once you’re gone, it is over. You will be dead.” Lina peered intently at Uncle Scrawl, waiting for his answer.

“I understand. I am ready to die. Do it, Lina. Clap, you’re a good lad. Thank you for helping me. This is, truly is, your most generous gift.”

It was as if she scheduled his death for a specific time on the clock. There was no outward evidence that anything was happening, Uncle Scrawl simply slipped away while Lina peered at her screen in Sweden.

Though I witnessed it first-hand, I remained skeptical. “Lina, if you were able to control this telekinetically, why did you need the Skype link?”

“It wasn’t for me. It was for him. It was for him to know someone he considered professional was there, looking at him, helping him. He would have considered you a little too close. Even though he asked you. I just know that’s how it is.”

“Could you have done it without seeing him?” I remained skeptical.

“Of course, Clap. It would have been the same. The only difference would have been that he would not have had the opportunity to actively participate. I feel obliged to let the recipient engage, if they can and they wish.” Lina’s words reinforced my sense of her; I considered her something akin to a saint.

That morning she awakened me two hours late, it didn’t occur to me psychokinetic expression could be used not only as a means of intimacy and humanity but as a means of control. It could be used, I discovered later, as a means of accumulating power and money and, when a person became too annoying to tolerate any longer, murder. That wasn’t the case with Uncle Scrawl. But I decided it may have been the case with a rich tycoon whose death left Lina several million dollars richer.  I knew nothing of him until I read the paper twelve weeks after his death:

The last will and testament of Carbon Steel, the mayonnaise magnet who died suddenly three months ago, leaves the bulk of his estate to Lina Lindström, an expert in criminal forensics, living in Sörfjärden Sweden. Ms. Lindström, when reached about the surprise inheritance, expressed shock and surprise, saying, “Oh, my, I did not even know Mr. Steel. The only time I communicated with him was following his mother’s fall, when she broke her hip. I offered my condolences and my advice and counsel.

.

Gavin Colquist shrieked, his clothes catching on thorns and branches as he sprinted through the underbrush. By the time he had run the thirty yards to his car, thin red lines paralleled the rips in his polyester button-down shirt. His torn shirt and battered cargo shorts clung to his sweat-soaked skin. Beneath his knees, short straight ribbons of red bled from scratches that looked like razor cuts. He tried to open the door. Locked! He scrambled to find the keys in his right pocket, frantic to get in the car. As he fumbled with the keys in the lock cylinder, he felt the thuds of his pursuer’s feet hit the ground behind him. Colquist yanked the key from the door and, clutching his key chain in his right hand, spun around toward his attacker. He swung hard with the key protruding from between the middle fingers of his clenched fist like a knife, slicing through only air as his attacker dodged the swing. As the man lunged toward him, Colquist heard an odd sound, like the buzz a bee makes as it darts by the ear. The man slumped to the ground, blood gushing from a wound in his temple. Colquist’s heart raced as he tried to process what had happened. He heard branches crunching behind him. He pivoted on his heels, toward the noise. An old woman, her grey hair twisted into a bun rising above the back of her head, approached. The skin on her face and arms looked like tree bark, brown and scarred and twisted. Her piercing blue eyes seemed to him almost otherworldly. She held a black rifle, the end of its barrel equipped with what Colquist assumed must be a silencer; he’d seen such equipment in the movies.

When she was ten feet away, she stopped. “You almost didn’t make it. That bastard,” nodding to the corpse on the ground, “would have killed you if I hadn’t shot him.”

Colquist looked at the dead man lying almost at his feet. He was huge, Colquist thought, scanning the man’s body.

“What, what, what, who…is he?” Colquist’s eyes bobbed between the corpse and the old woman.

“He was Cyrus. Only name he had. Lived out here like an animal. Killed livestock, game, anything he could eat. He’s killed people before. And he would have killed you. And he would have eaten you as sure as the sun shines.”

Colquist shifted his weight from his left foot to the right and back again. “Well, thank you for saving my life! I guess we better call the police…or sheriff…or whoever.”

“This land isn’t for the law. We make our own laws out here. What I did was just. Right. There’s no need to ask for trouble by calling the law.” The old woman’s face morphed from deadpan to menacing.

Colquist’s heart began to race again. “Okay. But…”

The old woman’s eyes blazed and she gritted her teeth. “But, what? You the type that, once you’ve gone, decide to bring the law back here ’cause you saw something didn’t match your idea of civilized?”

“No. I’m still just scared. Scared that he tried to get me and scared that you killed him.”

She cocked her head, her mouth morphing into a scowl, as she raised her eyebrows. It looked to Colquist like she was trying to decide what to do with him. She still held the rifle, pointed toward the ground, but in his direction.

“Tell you what we’re gonna do,” the woman said, “we’re gonna go to my place and sit on the porch and talk about this.”

Colquist’s heart continued to race as he frantically searched for something to tell her that would convince her he wouldn’t bring the law back. “Look, there’s nothing I want more than to forget I was ever here. Let me just get in my car and leave. I’ll never come back and won’t send anyone.”

She raised the gun, pointing it toward Colquist, a sinister smile crossing her face. “No, you won’t. But you’re not gonna leave, either. I have something in mind for you. You’ll get used to it out here. Now that he’s gone, it’ll be more peaceful.”

[I’m exploring a little, here. This sort of stuff isn’t really satisfying, even if I complete a story. But it helps me understand how to begin to capture sensations (e.g., fear, panic, terror) that might prove handy in another genre of writing.]