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I see I'm the first out. Long story-sorry. JJ White
New Topic #5 - Kaleidoscope
Life for Jimmy Colten was uneventful; even predictable, but today he would soon discover his ordinary world would be anything but.
He grabbed the seat cushion with both hands so tightly that his fingers turned white from the pressure. Jimmy was used to traveling on his Vespa scooter at a top speed of only forty-miles-per hour, but now his heart thumped wildly as Chip Reston gunned the bright yellow Saleen Mustang to 125, one hand on the wheel, the other feeling up Jimmy’s date, Sara.
“Slow it down, will ya Chip?” Jimmy pleaded from the back seat. “I’m not even buckled in. Slow it down, I tell ya!”
“Slow it down, slow it down,” Chip mocked his skinny, acne faced rider. “Didja hear that Sara? Your loser boyfriend’s scared shitless. Why you wanna hang around a wimp like him for?”
Sara scooted around in the front bucket seat and peered over the headrest at Jimmy. She frowned, and turned back to the broad shouldered tight end of the Claxton High varsity football team.
“He’s not my boyfriend, Chippy. I needed a ride and he had his scooter. I didn’t know it was going to break down.” She leaned in close to his ear and whispered. Chip grinned and slowed the car to a stop on the edge of the state road.
“Get the hell out, Colten.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“I’m not getting out. It’s almost a mile to town. C’mon Chip, quit screwing around.”
“Last stop for Colten,” Chip said, pulling on an imaginary train whistle. Sara burst out laughing and flung her arms around Chip.
“All nerds exit at this stop,” Chip continued. Sara was beside herself with laughter.
“No way,” Jimmy said, and crossed his arms.
“Okay, Colten, have it your way.” Chip said, as he exited the car. He reached in and grabbed Jimmy by his faded “Linkin Park” T-shirt and dragged him out of the back seat. In one motion, Chip flung Jimmy down the small ditch embankment and shut the door. Jimmy raised his head to see Sara waving wildly at him as the Saleen’s tires smoked down the highway.
Jimmy had thought that losing his father last year was the low point in his young life but now he felt his life descending toward a miserable spiral of despair as everything he did seemed to bring him more heartache. Since his father’s violent and unexpected death last year at the hands of a burglar, Jimmy had endured the embarrassment of his alcoholic step-mother, taunting classmates, bad skin, and now the humiliation of being dumped by the only girl he had ever dated.
He kicked at a rock along the side of the highway in frustration, and began walking the mile into town. He turned at the sound of a light “thump” behind him, and eyed a small white tube lying on the emergency lane pavement. He picked it up and perused it on all sides. It was about six inches long and an inch wide and had two sections of white cardboard with glass lenses in each end, like a telescope. The sections rotated in opposite directions as if they were designed to be used as a focusing tool. Written on the outside of the tube in large letters were the words, “Spectre Kaleidoscope”. Smaller letters underneath read, “Try me”.
He’d always been fond of the kaleidoscope he had as a child, so he held it up toward the sun and twisted the two sections. He lowered it immediately and rubbed his right eye where the sun’s light had temporarily blinded him. It had no colored glass prisms inside the tube as it should. Instead, it was merely a tube of clear glass and even more unusual, glass that had no magnification.
Why would they build a kaleidoscope that wasn’t a kaleidoscope, he wondered?
He looked through it again, this time pointing at a “Drive Safely” sign the Department of Transportation had erected at the site of a fatal crash. Jimmy read the eulogy to the dead motorist written underneath the motto. It read, “In Memory of Hector Gonzalez”.
Suddenly, a man’s face appeared in the glass and Jimmy felt himself being tugged toward the sign. He dropped the tube and looked straight ahead, but saw no one. He picked up the kaleidoscope and again aimed at the sign. A Hispanic man, dressed in a white long sleeved shirt and gray pants, waved to him and grinned.
“Jesus!” Jimmy yelled, threw the tube in the ditch, and ran down the road toward town. A half mile from the town he approached another “Drive Safely” memorial sign. At the bottom of the signpost lay the kaleidoscope. He hesitantly picked it up and again peered through it at the sign. Standing in front of him was a sad looking young woman holding a baby.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Who are you?” He walked toward them still peering through the glass kaleidoscope and reached out with his right arm. He felt the soft belly of the baby and was about to say something, when the woman grabbed his arm. He dropped the tube and the ghosts disappeared from his view, yet he was still being dragged toward the sign by his right arm. He screamed, “Let me go!” and kicked off the signpost with his feet until he felt his arm release from the vise-like grip. He scooted back on his buttocks away from the sign. As he caught his breath, he saw the inscription, “In loving memory of Wendy and Jessica Rouse”.
He ran toward town and didn’t stop until he reached the outskirts. Two gravediggers were hard at work, throwing dirt on a white casket in St. Mary’s cemetery. As he walked by the grave, he felt his foot kick a small object. The tube. The same tube he threw away twice, now haunted him, dared him to pick it up. He walked faster but the tube stayed close, rolling behind him like a new puppy. Jimmy stopped and tentatively lifted it. Surely he would see nothing. If the tube only showed the dead where they met their fate, then surely he would see no ghost in the cemetery. Why would it want him to view a cemetery where the dead rest? They didn’t die there like the people on the highway.
He pointed it at the gravediggers and looked through the tube. An older woman floated above the casket, beckoning him with a fragile, withered finger. As if predetermined, the gravediggers laid down their shovels and stepped behind a front end loader for a cigarette break.
Jimmy stepped closer to the specter.
“What do you want? Can you tell me why I can see you? Did you die here or was it somewhere else?”
There was no answer. Jimmy lowered his gaze momentarily to view the woman without the tube, but she wasn’t there. He looked through the tube again and jerked his head back when he saw the woman’s face in the lens. He felt her hands grab his shoulders and before he could scream, he was sucked into the casket and into utter darkness. He lay on top of the corpse with his back atop her chest. She wrapped her arms tightly around him and whispered, “Stay with me, love. Don’t leave me. I want you to stay… forever.”
Jimmy screamed and beat against the inside of the casket with his arms and legs.
“Let me out! Let me out!” he screamed. “Dear God, help me.”
His voice grew faint as the last of his oxygen was replaced with the methane gas of the decomposing corpse. Her bony fingers dug painfully into his chest.
“Stay with me love,” she cooed.
A bright light blinded Jimmy as the viewing part of the casket opened.
“What the hell are you doing in there, son?” the startled gravedigger asked.
Jimmy didn’t answer. He snapped the bones of the old woman’s arms, jumped out of the casket onto the earth, and ran for home. The white tube laid aside the old woman’s shriveled cheekbone.
He rushed in his house and sped by his drunken step-mother, Lucy, who licked the last remnants of a cupcake off her fingers.
“What the hell smells like a dead dog, for Christ’s sake?” she asked him as he rushed by. “Is that you that stinks, Jimmy? God, the least you could do is get me a beer, you useless…” Her voice drifted off as Jimmy threw the last of his clothes out his bedroom window. After he showered and dressed, he sat on his bed and tried to fathom what had happened. When he lay down on his pillow, he felt something hard against his ear. It was back. He knocked it on the floor, but it floated back toward his hand. He smashed it against the desk, but the shattered glass reformed and the object once again flew back to him. He took it, walked over to the open window, and threw it outside to the backyard, but when he turned around it was beside his pillow again.
Surrendering, he picked it up and placed it to his eye.
“Fine. I’ll do what you want if you’ll just leave me alone.”
He scanned the room. Nothing. No ghosts in his room, thank God. He placed it on the bed.
“There’s nothing here, now go!” he yelled at the inanimate object. The tube rolled near his hand. When he grabbed it, it pulled him to the window.
“Fine,” he said. “Whatever.”
He looked through it into the backyard and his mouth gaped open. It was his father, waving to him as he had years ago from the bleachers of his Little League games.
“Dad. Oh my God, Dad. It’s me… Jimmy” he said, waving back through the window.
He ran by Lucy, ignoring her as he went out the back door into the yard holding the tube over his eye. He walked near his father.
“Dad, is that you?” he asked.
His father nodded.
“Can you speak?”
He shook his head no and reached out to hug Jimmy. Jimmy relaxed as he felt his father’s strong arms pull him close. He stepped back.
“Dad? Are you coming back?”
His father shook his head sadly.
Jimmy thought of that day a year ago when the burglar shot his father, right where they now stood.
“Dad, I miss you so much. I hate Lucy and I hate school. When that burglar killed you, my life stopped too. I…I…wish you were still here.”
Jimmy’s father shook his head vigorously.
“What’s wrong? Are you trying to tell me that you can’t come back?” he asked.
His father continued to shake his head no.
“The burglar?” Jimmy asked.
His father nodded.
“The burglar that shot you?”
Again the man nodded his head.
“Do you know who did it, Dad?”
Yes, he nodded.
Jimmy thought quickly and ran into the house and grabbed some paper and pen. He quickly jotted the alphabet on the paper and ran to his father. He pointed to the paper and said.
“Spell out who did it, Dad?”
His father pointed to four letters.
“L-U-C-Y,” they spelled.
“Lucy did it, Dad? Lucy killed you?” he asked incredulously.
He looked at his father through the tube for a response and noticed his father was pointing frantically behind him. Jimmy turned and saw Lucy racing toward him, an axe held high above her. Jimmy held his hands over his head to try and deflect the blow when suddenly the axe flipped in the air and came crashing down on Lucy’s head, splitting it in two. She collapsed to the ground, the axe still lodged in her skull. Jimmy felt sick as he gaped at the grotesque sight, then screamed when he felt someone grab his shoulder. It was his neighbor Jerry Watkins.
“Are you alright son?” he asked. Jimmy nodded.
Watkins stared down at the mutilated corpse of Lucy Colten and shook his head.
“I saw her coming after you, Jimmy. I saw what she intended to do. The axe must have slipped in her hands. It was odd how it seemed to float almost on its own. And turning like that. I couldn’t believe it. She was dead before I could even warn you.”
Jimmy sighed deeply as he felt the warm arms of his father wrap around his chest.
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