Undermind: Nine Stories (26 page)

“I don’t believe this.” He leafed through the
envelopes again; certain there had to be another one from the same
sender. There wasn’t. He saw the company phone number on the check,
grabbed his phone and dialed it. He chose Accounts Payable from the
automated voice menu.

“Bob Gorlecki,” he heard a voice say after just
two rings.

“Bob, this is Lance Beaumont of Beaumont
Security Systems. I did a job at one of your stores recently in
Tarzana, California and submitted an invoice for $12,000. I just
got out of the hospital after a bad car wreck and found that you
sent me a check for $12.00. I need the correct amount sent as soon
as possible.”

“If we made some type of mistake, we’ll be happy
to correct it. I’ll just need you to send me a copy of the invoice
and I’ll have our accounting department look into it. Do you need
the address?”

“Bob. There is no “if.” You sent me a check for
twelve fucking dollars on a twelve thousand dollar job. I need the
full payment, and I need it today.”

“Sir, I’m just about to leave the office. I’m
afraid nothing can be done today. But if you’ll send me
documentation that confirms the work you did for us, the
authorization for payment, and a copy of what you claim is an
incorrect payment amount, I’m sure we can get this straightened
out.”

“Dammit, Bob. You’re not listening to me. I just
got out of the hospital after being in a near fatal car wreck and I
have no money in the bank. You have my security system in your
store AND you have my money. It’s bad enough I had to wait for you
to send a check through the fucking postal service, but now,
considering how you just screwed me with a twelve dollar check, I
want you, or someone with authorization, to rise up to the call of
duty, if not above and beyond by sending me the balance you owe me
TODAY, via wire transfer. Are you getting me, Bob? Am I making
myself fucking clear, Bob?”

“I’m sorry sir, but I refuse to be spoken to in
this way, and as I believe
 
I’ve
 
made
clear, we are closing the office and will be back on Monday. I’ve
told you what is needed to resolve this issue and I won’t be
verbally abused into doing anything other than our standard
procedure. Good day, sir.”

When Lance heard the beep signaling that the
call had ended, he almost threw his phone through his television
screen. He clenched his teeth in anger and took several deep
breaths to calm himself before hitting the Call Back button on his
phone’s display. The number rang several times and was finally
picked up by a recording informing him of the company’s business
hours and giving him an option to leave a message.

He pressed the End button without leaving a
message. He was seething with rage and his leg was now throbbing in
greater pain than usual. He wanted to kill Bob and he imagined the
building that Bob was in blowing up with a massive explosion and
the subsequent formation of a mushroom cloud appearing over the
rubble. Un-fucking-believable. This could take forever to get his
money. How was he going to eat, or keep his utilities on, or do
anything for that matter?

“Damn you!” he screamed at Bob from over two
thousand miles away. He wanted to smash something. He wanted to
smash a lot of things. The anger inside him was increasing and it
pulsed in tune with the throbbing pain in his leg. He hated the
dull mind that came from his pain-killers but now he wanted to be
oblivious. It was the only thing that would keep him from going
crazy or exploding.

Domino watched Lance take the pills. It was
clear to him that something was very wrong and he wanted to comfort
Lance but he was afraid to come close to him. He’d never seen Lance
like this before and he wasn’t sure if he’d been bad. Maybe Lance
was upset with him. That would explain why he was gone for so long.
Domino didn’t know if he had done something wrong, but if he did,
he was sorry. Feeling guilty, he lowered his ears and sneaked quick
glances at Lance every now and then to see if he was still in
trouble.
 

***

A week after talking to Bob and sending the
paperwork that the stupid jerk insisted on, Lance was sitting on
the couch watching CNN Headline News with the sound muted. He read
the scrolling news ticker at the bottom of the screen and sometimes
played a game of trying to read the lips of the newscasters. He
could rarely tell what they were saying though, and he didn’t
care.

Nothing much mattered to him anymore. During the
last week, he had eaten all of the groceries Kim had left behind
and then had to start in on things that had been in his cabinets
forever and would probably never have been eaten otherwise.
Why
do we buy shit we have no intention of eating
, he wondered. He
had no appetite and only ate when he couldn’t take the hunger
anymore after it had gotten to the point of making him dizzy and
weak.

He thought about his life and where he had
started off and where he had ended up.  When he was young, he
expected nothing out of life and so any time something good did
happen to him, he viewed it skeptically and with the thought that
it wouldn’t last. Lance’s parents died in a car wreck when he was a
baby. He survived, uninjured and was put up for adoption since he
had no relatives who could or would take him in.

He grew up feeling completely alone. He never
bonded with any foster family and he hated the other boys in the
group-home where he spent the last of his teenage years. He
graduated from high school at the age of 17. He walked away from
the school and never looked back. The state emancipated him since
he only had the summer remaining before he turned 18 and there was
no reason to spend any money keeping him fed and sheltered for
three more months in the group home.

He had no idea what to do with his life at first
so he wandered from one meaningless job to another. He was very
intelligent but never even thought of getting an education beyond
high school. The years drifted by with Lance barely making a living
until finally he found himself in yet another meaningless job when
it occurred to him that he could run the business better than the
owner could.

He tried telling the owner his ideas, but was
rudely dismissed as not having valid input. The owner had gone to
college and had a degree in business administration. Lance had
nothing but a high school education and therefore didn’t know what
he was talking about. At first, Lance was angry at the owner’s
ignorance and unwillingness to listen to him. If he had, he
would’ve seen that Lance had some very valuable input – college
degree or not.

The angrier Lance got, the more determined he
became to start his own business and put his ideas into practice.
So he started saving money. He lived very cheaply, renting a
bedroom in the basement of a house where his only possessions were
his clothing, a TV and a video game console. He began delivering
pizza at night to make even more money, all of which he kept under
his mattress.

After three years of saving, he registered a
business name, bought supplies, rented a storage unit to keep them
in and started advertising. Things started off painfully slow, but
he always did the best work he could and it was extremely happy
customers referring him to others that got his business rolling.
Then it started to snowball. The more customers Lance got, the more
referrals he got and it just kept going. He was eventually running
his own business. And then with the contract he had landed just
before his birthday, his company had become larger than the one he
had left, and Lance was sure he’d be putting his former employer
out of business before the year was up.

Things couldn’t have gotten much better for him
just before the wreck. He went from expecting nothing good out of
life to having a lot to be happy about and much to be thankful for.
And then he lost it all in one day.

Lance had grown up with no guidance, no mentor,
no help of any kind from anyone. Everything he had accomplished had
been on his own. People always said ‘God helps those who help
themselves.’ Lance thought, if you’re helping yourself, then how do
you know God was even involved? Lance was the one with the ideas
and the one who worked over-time on every project he could, and the
one who worked a second job and saved money, etc. He didn’t see
where God played any part at all.

 He had everything one day, and then
nothing the next. What did that say about God? Did God also hurt
those who helped themselves just to even things out a little? Lance
concluded that the only intelligent answer was that there was no
God because that made the most sense. God didn’t give him success
and happiness and then take it all away. Not unless God was a
raving lunatic who decided the fate of people by rolling dice.

Lance made his business successful with
determination, good ideas and a great work ethic. Random chance
took everything away. If he had left his house just a few seconds
sooner or later, he wouldn’t have been in that spot on the road
when that brainless twit plowed into him. Random bloody chance.
That’s all life was. Lance was committed to out-living Domino, and
that was it. As soon as Domino died he would kill himself.

In the meantime, he had to go through the
motions of living, and that meant paying the bills, and cooking and
cleaning. After he had come home from the hospital, he
sub-contracted the big job he had landed to his former employer.
Lance would get 20% of whatever profit the sub-contractor made.

He looked at his coffee table and although it
was littered with junk mail, bills and trash, he could still easily
spot the electricity disconnection notice printed on blue paper
with the words FINAL NOTICE in letters one inch tall. He needed to
pay that by tomorrow. That meant he had to get up and see if he’d
gotten the replacement check from Ohio yet or if his sub-contractor
had sent him anything.

Knowing that walking to the mailbox was going to
increase his pain level, he took two painkillers even though he had
already taken two less than an hour before. He leaned back on the
couch and gave the pills some time to get into his bloodstream
before motivating himself out of his lethargy so he could face the
arduous task of getting up and walking to the front door.

After a while, he reached for his crutches and
by pushing downward on them he pulled himself up to a standing
position. He got the crutches situated under his armpits and
hobbled over to the front door, dragging his dead leg. He put his
right crutch in his left hand and balanced himself so he could open
the door. When he did so, he felt a blast of heat come off the
glass of the storm door and winced. God, it was hot. If he didn’t
have a check today, he and Domino were going to bake to death
before starvation could kill them.

He opened the storm door and since the spring
device that was supposed to make the door close automatically was
broken, it drifted all the way open as Lance reached his hand
around the doorway to withdraw his mail from the box attached to
the exterior wall on his right.

Across the street, Devon descended into a hole
next to a dead tree stump. A sleeping rabbit suddenly awoke. The
first thing it noticed was that bright light was entering the
warren from the entrance hole so it was much too early for him to
be awake. But the rabbit felt wide awake and alert even though he
knew the moon could not possibly be out there already. It was not
safe to go out yet. But he felt unsettled and his heart was beating
fast. Suddenly an image of a snake flashed into the rabbits mind.
The rabbit responded without thinking. He bolted forward and then
upward and shot through the hole. It was extremely bright outside
and way too much light was in his eyes, but the image of the snake
flashed again so he kept on running.

Domino was standing just behind Lance and a
little to his left as Lance struggled to keep his balance while
tearing his mail as he tried to extract envelopes that were too
tightly crammed into the mailbox. Domino watched Lance, wishing he
could help but there was nothing he could do. Then he detected
rapid motion across the street. His ears stood up and his pupils
expanded. He tilted his head so he could get a better view across
the street because anything outside that moved
 
could
 
represent a threat to Lance or his property.

A rabbit! Domino was pleasantly surprised. He
almost never saw rabbits. He took off like a lightning bolt,
unaware that he had hit Lance’s crutch on his way out the door. He
dug into the grass with his nails to better increase his speed as
he ran across the lawn and then changed his running technique as he
leaped over the curb and began running on asphalt when he
landed.

The driver of the truck coming down the street
had just barely seen a flash of fur flying in front of him and knew
he had hit a dog before he even had time to hit his brake pedal. He
pressed the pedal to the floor, locking up his back tires and
screeching to a halt.

As Lance’s crutch was knocked forward by Domino,
he fell on his back and the wind was knocked out of him. As he
struggled to breathe, he heard a thump, a yelp, and skidding
tires.
 
Oh God, no!
 
He immediately knew what had just happened. He
heard a car door open and then shut. He heard doors and
screen-doors open and close. He heard people gasping and talking
suddenly. He heard a man say, “I never even saw him. I swear to
God. He came out of nowhere!”

Lance was finally able to breathe. He lifted his
head up and looked past his feet to the street outside. A small
crowd was forming around Domino’s body which was lying in the
street in an expanding puddle of blood.

This was the moment Devon had been waiting for.
He released the rabbit and watched as the stupid dog continued to
chase it even though he no longer had a body to chase
with.