Checkers

 

David’s life was a yo-yo journey between the heights of madness and the depths of depression. He had pills that evened him out, but he said that they mushed his brain so much that he couldn’t beat a chimp at checkers. Though he never had the chance to prove it.

First of all, checker-playing chimps were not easy to come by. Amazon doesn’t sell them, and the medical animal supply company requires much more paperwork than David could supply. He tried a few other animals with simpler permit requirements, but their checker skills were subpar.

He devised a series of experiments using human opponents but kept running into roadblocks. First, the control state, to prove he was a genius when it came to checkers, could only be accomplished if he went off his meds. So he often wound up incarcerated before he could find a worthy opponent.

He tried playing people in the various wards, but he found no players the theoretical chimp couldn’t beat anyway. He tried playing computer opponents, but they were too predictable. The doctors weren’t any help. They tried to convince him that since nobody could beat him at checkers, he wasn’t as impaired as he imagined.

Then he met Fred.

Fred was winning dollar bills, the maximum bet allowed by the attendants, from the other patients by beating them at tic-tac-toe. Eventually, Fred challenged David, and they drew. They grinned at each other for a while, then discussed the morons who think the center square is the secret. They knew better.

Of course, they moved to checkers. Fred won the first game. David won the next two. Then Fred won three in a row, taking the best of five. Fred stared at David for a long time. He agreed that David was a better player, but he made mistakes every third or so move.

David slept well that night. His theory was proven correct. In the morning he found Fred and asked him to go with him to the doctor to explain what happened with the checkers games. Fred frowned, saying that he didn’t think he could help David with his problem.

David asked, “Why not?”

Fred replied, “Because...I...kill...children.”

Suddenly David’s checkers difficulties seemed trivial.

The Audition

Lights Out

Jump Start

 Phil was never accused by his fellow parents of being overprotective, or for that matter, protective at all. If not for his wife, Carla, Little Bill would be completely feral. Despite what they said, he did however have a basic sense of safety for the child.

Such was the case on a sunny afternoon when Bill was in the garage riding his big wheel. The comforting sound of plastic rolling over cement suddenly stopped. Not too concerning, but then Phil thought he heard the squeaky springs of the car hood pop open. Not good.

On his way to the garage, he imagined several mostly harmless reasons for the sounds he heard. None of them were close to correct. There in the garage was Bill, standing on a step ladder, hooking jumper cables to the car battery.

The cable ran to the floor, where they were hooked to the head and left front paw of a dead squirrel. Phil told Bill, “That won’t work.” Bill asked why not, and Phil had no real answer, but figured a demonstration would be best, so he got in and started the car.

At first nothing happened, but then the squirrel started twitching. Phil was about to apologize for doubting Bill when the squirrel exploded. Phil shut off the car and tried to think of what he was going to tell Carla. The mess was cleanable, but the severed squirrel paw embedded in Bill’s thigh was problematic.

The Messenger

Fresno

 

Paul got off the bus in Fresno and started taking pictures. He’s wanted to go to Fresno nearly his whole life. He grew up down the road from a junkyard that had a purple bus out front with a destination sign that read “FRESNO.”

Now here he was. It was all that he knew it would be. The internet leaves little room for not knowing things. Our modern life leaves little to the imagination.

Then there was a man on Paul’s view screen. Paul turned to shoot something else, but the man moved to stay in frame. Paul lowered his camera and gave the man a look he calculated would convey his annoyance, but didn’t.

Then the man yelled, “Please don’t take my picture!”

Paul replied, “I’m trying not to.”

“I know, but don’t.”

“I won’t”

“You’ll be sorry if you do.”

Paul didn’t say anything. The man kept looking down at Paul’s camera, then back up at Paul’s eyes. After a while, the man started walking backwards till he bumped into a parking meter and almost fell down. Just because of the weirdness of the moment, Paul took a picture of the man.

The man straightened up, smiled, and said, “Thank you, but remember, I warned you.” Then collapsed onto the sidewalk.

A passerby tried CPR till the ambulance arrived, but it did no good. The man was dead.

The hotel clerk had no interest in Paul’s dead guy picture story. Neither did the waitress at the restaurant or the bartender at the hotel bar. Being a kook was not to Paul’s liking. He tried to let it go, but with everyone he met, he felt compelled to tell his story. Like, if he could get someone to believe him, it would all be OK.

But he couldn’t, so it wasn’t.

Then came the nightmares. The guilt of killing someone, mixed with no understanding of what happened, made for some wild dreams. They ended with Paul jerking awake as someone screamed, “Don’t let them take my picture.”

Paul sat for a while, catching his breath, trying to calm himself when he realized that the screaming voice was his own.

The next morning he returned to his quest to explore Fresno. By the afternoon, the novelty had worn off. This didn’t surprise him. Fresno was the excuse to take a trip, not the whole trip on its own. Over dinner, he checked bus routes and decided that Tijuana would be a good next stop.

He didn’t take any pictures that day. The few sights he saw weren’t worth the risk of touching his camera again. He spent another restless night. Tonight’s dreams had Paul running, and other people were trying to take his picture. He wanted to stop and get it over with, but a voice kept telling him to run. He woke up at 3 AM in a sweat. He went to his bag, got his camera, and took a selfie. Nothing happened. He slept well after that.

In the morning, waiting at the bus station, Paul realized he was hearing a voice in his head. The confusing part was that it was his voice, but his voice was saying things that he would never say. Much of it was nonsense, like a newborn baby was using his voice. Then the baby grew up.

By the time he was on the bus, the voice was making sense. Well, the sentences made sense. What they were saying didn’t. Then they did, and that was the scariest part.

Paul’s internal voice told him that he entered Paul’s head when he took that man’s picture. It said he would eventually control Paul, and then they would die. The only way to get rid of him was to have someone else take his picture, but had to ask the person not to take his picture.

Paul thought about that for a minute, then said aloud, “What?”

The woman beside him said, “What?”

Paul looked at her and wondered how he could have missed her. Beautiful, dressed all in black lace. The impression was that she was young and old at the same time. He apologized.

She smiled and said, “Tell me about it.”

So he did. He couldn’t stop himself. He told her the whole twisted tale. Her smile grew wider, and as Paul finished repeating what the voice said, he noticed she was holding a camera. Without thinking he yelled, “Don’t take my picture!”

When he woke up, it was night. He was still alive and still on the bus. The woman was gone. So was the voice. Well, there was still a voice in his head, but it was his. All his. Then he found the note in his pocket. It read, “You’re safe now.”

Tijuana was much more interesting than Fresno and is a great place to drink your troubles away. Best of all, nobody screamed when he took their picture.

His third night there, he noticed a woman staring at him. She noticed that he noticed and said, “Etiquetado.”

Paul asked, “What?”

She giggled and walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Etiquetado.”

“Tag?”

“Si, tagged.”

“How did you know?”

“It shows.” She laughed and walked away. Paul felt no desire to follow.

When the tequila binge wore off, he found himself in a cheap motel in San Ysidro. He finally got up the courage to try to research what had happened to him.

It took a while, but then he found the rabbit hole. Soul Tag. He got caught in a game of Soul Tag. The problem was that the souls being “tagged” are not willing participants. They try to escape the game by jumping to non-players, like Paul. If they can avoid getting tagged, they and their host die after a few days.

He figured the woman on the bus was a player who collected the soul that jumped to him. Whoever collects all the souls is the winner. Then the game starts over, with the same souls being scattered again.

Paul wondered what sins committed these poor souls to such torture.

Tisum