Anton Strout: Dead To Me

Mrs. Teasley cleared her throat at the back of the coffeehouse and my concentration broke. I had come to know that sound all too well during the past few months. One of her half-baked visions was coming through, and since there was no getting around Mrs. Teasley having her say, I simply waited. She kept her eyes focused intently on the pile of soggy coffee grounds spread out on the table before her, not once looking up. “Simon, dear, I think you ought to know…”

She paused to shuffle the pile around with her stained fingers. I raised my eyebrows at Connor, who simply looked pissed off. He was, after all, in the middle of trying to instruct me.

“Yes, Mrs. T?” I asked. “Whatis it?”

I tried to hide my annoyance, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were too harsh. Did I really want to be the kind of guy who shouted at well-meaning old ladies? I looked around the room to see if there were any babies I could steal candy from.

As Mrs. Teasley sifted her fingers further through the coffee grounds, I felt a slow, curious energy building in her corner of the cafй. Everything around her-except the cat on her lap-seemed to course with the mounting power. Magazines on an unbussed coffee table shuffled around of their own volition as if unseen hands were haphazardly flipping through them. Nearby coffee mugs clattered on saucers, adding their own cacophonous soundtrack. Through it all, Mrs. Teasley maintained her focus on the coffee grounds. I looked around to see if any of the norms had taken notice, but none of them were paying the old woman or the energy dispersal any attention.

Mrs. Teasley moved her face closer to the table and sniffed deeply before raising her eyes to meet mine. She looked at me with total seriousness, as if she had just been given a sign direct from the Almighty him (or her) self. Even though I generally thought her precognitive powers came from a secret pact as a Psychic Friend of Dionne Warwick, for once I took her seriously.

“Simon,” she sputtered. “You need to know this…there’s going to be some turmoil in your near future. Oh yes, great turmoil, indeed!” She pressed her eyes firmly shut as if she were going off to a distant land in her mind. Her lips trembled as if she was in great pain, and her breathing became irregular. She looked on the verge of passing out and I started to rise, fearing for her safety, but she spoke before I could get fully out of my chair. “You’re going…you’re going to be surprised by an unexpected guest.”

“That’s it?” I muttered. “Jesus, could you be any vaguer?”

Connor scolded me with a look, but I really couldn’t see what worth she had to the Department. I secretly thought theymust keep Mrs. Teasley around simply as a way to teach other staffers tolerance and patience. I made a mental note to grab the pamphlet from the Training Department calledYour COworkers amp; You: COoperate!

“That sounds right on the money, Mrs. T,” I said by way of apology. “Just great. Thanks for the heads-up.”

Quietly, I turned to Connor. “Honestly, why do they keep the old woman on? I’ve seen better guessing at a carnival sideshow.”

“And certainly better-looking women, too,” Connor replied. Then, lowering his voice, he said, “Truth be told, Simon, I think she’s got some pull with the Enchancellors. I know most of her predictions and precogs are limited to only a few minutes into the future and the accuracy of them is shaky at best, but someone higher up than either of us clearly feels different about it.”

I sighed.

Connor turned away from her entirely. “Never mind her. Just take a stab at the PEZ dispenser.”

“Right,” I said sheepishly. “Sorry.”

Settling back into the task at hand, I pushed away the surrounding chatter and smells of the coffeehouse. As I raised the PEZ dispenser once more, my eyes glazed over. A stir of energy much like the one Mrs. Teasley had generated began to form around me. It crackled like electricity and was charged with such intensity that it blew a wash of static through my hair. The last thing I saw as I fell into the vision was that Connor’s skunkish mop had gone all Einstein as well.

My mind’s eye kicked in and I was blinded by the brightness of the sun and the salty sting of the air. There was a light breeze carrying the pleasant smell of sand and sea. I concentrated on other surrounding details, hoping for clues. In the window of a car parked nearby (one of those midseventies fishbowly cars like a Pacer or a Gremlin), I caught the momentary flash of my reflection. A sandy-haired boy of about ten years old with a somewhat dull expression on his face stared back at me.

He (and I) ran across a parking lot toward a rise of grass-covered dunes, arm in arm with a slightly older boy who looked a lot like him. The two of them were laughing and half out of breath, skipping foolishly along. Thanks to his smaller size, he was barely managing to keep up with the older one.

My brain kicked into a lucid dreaming TiVo-like mode as I sensed the inevitable about to happen and I was able to slip the entire vision into slow-motion. The boy’s shorter legs were no match for the older kid, and down he went, the older boy dragging him along. Because I sometimes experienced all the tactile senses of my host body, I felt the full pain of his knee scraping across the blistering, gravelly pavement. A sizable patch of skin peeled off before he shook free from the other kid and bounced to a stop.

Immediately, the older boy broke away from him, not out of concern, but because he knew he would be the first one blamed. His face was full of panic. As the younger kid began to cry, the older immediately started denying any involvement to the gathering of looky-loos forming around them. The younger one tried to stand up, but with a queasy look at his raw, pebble-embedded knee, he plopped weakly back to the pavement. An even saltier sting filled his eyes, and I could taste the bitter tears as they rolled down his face and into the corners of his mouth. He sat there crying until the comforting hands of an older woman scooped under his arms and lovingly lifted him up.

Through the blur of tears, her sympathetic face and frosted blond stack of hair came into focus. Lucidity kicked in again and I compressed time, speeding it up until I found the boy standing at the counter of a penny-candy store. The older woman tended to the one thing that she knew would soothe his pain and stop his crying-sweets. She paid the clerk and handed him a small bag full of waxy bottles filled with juicy bursts of liquid, caramel bull’s eyes, and Atomic Fireballs. At the top of the bag, playing king of the hill, was the best of all, a brand new PEZ dispenser. As he beamed from ear to ear, I could already feel the pain in his scraped knee fading. Ah, the healing powers of sugary goodness.

I pulled out of the vision. Connor stared at me expectantly, his hair no longer static ridden. As reality took hold, I began to feel shaky from the toll my power had taken on my blood sugar. I snatched Connor’s sugary iced coffee out of his hand and drank it with all the table manners of Cookie Monster.

“Juice! And an iced coffee with five sugars!” Connor shouted over to the counter. When it arrived, I chugged half of it down in one gulp. Mainlining such quick sugar replenishers helped and my disorientation passed. “Easy, kid,” Connor said, patting me on the back.

“God, I hate this feeling,” I said. “Does this shit ever end?”

“You’re not the first noob I’ve instructed on this,” Connor said. “There’s always a price to be paid, kid, but with practice, it will lessen.”

“That’s a juicy little carrot to dangle before me,” I said. My hands were still shaking as I set the dispenser down. “I’m so sick of this hypoglycemia.”