The Preventer, Part 15

At the end of the day, when I saved Ms Martina Lemmon from casts, my mind shuttled back to the imaginary world. This time my steps echoed in the empty room, where nobody was to receive me. Casually, I looked around, and I ventured to check the unoccupied bed when Gabriel appeared.

‘Oh, where are the nurses?’ I asked him.

‘Because you know who Miranda is, you don’t need them any longer.’

‘Then how will I get the medical files of the next patient?’

‘Please, let me be your messenger this time,’ he said.

Gabriel extended his arm to deliver a stamped envelope to me. Heatedly, I opened it to find the newest patient case file there. A new female to be saved – it meant a new step toward getting Miranda back.

‘So, our next patient is called Naomi Young,’ I skimmed through the summary.

Page one: basic personal data with photos. Page two: a detailed description of the incident, which would put her into casts if I would fail. Page three to ten: a fully comprehensive account of the treatment, illustrated with colour pictures taken on all her casts.

‘Let there be Ms Naomi Young,’ my mentor said, putting her 3D image on the bed from nothing.

I couldn’t help but adoring the girl, who suddenly become visible. I merely guessed the blurred outlines of the well-shaped figure, which was almost fully captured in an immense-sized cocoon.

‘Heavenly.’ The word slipped out of my mouth.

‘Please, save this word for the right time.’

‘Okay, okay. I know we are here because of her accident and casts.’

Recalling Miranda, I knew what my end goal was, so I concentrated on the job. I turned my attention on the hard surface, and not on the sexy figure buried below it. Focusing, I acknowledged the dimension of the big shell, which swaddled a good part of her body.

‘By the way, she wears nice large casts,’ I said.

‘Ms Young will wear nice large casts,’ Gabriel picked out a better tense, talking about a possible future. ‘This is exactly what will happen to this young lady if you fail to help her.’

‘I try to do my best,’ I promised.

‘What can be not enough.’ He told me, but I didn’t care too much about his friendly mocking.

‘This is a shoulder spica cast and a one-and-half hip spica cast, merged into a big shell.’ Since the casts perfectly overlapped each other, I couldn’t decide whether I would talk about two pieces of casts or about only one.

So, let’s deal with the patient. With closed eyes, the imaginary Naomi rested in the imaginary bed in our imaginary room. Her long, curly brown hair cascaded down, touching even the upper part of her the violet-coloured body-fitting shell, which strictly confined her figure. Unluckily for Naomi, her two casts were made so huge that they seamlessly converged to shape one single construction, which encapsulated the complete left part of the body from neck to toes.

Anyway, a shoulder spica cast was an enormous cast, so Naomi’s medical dressing couldn’t be small, either. To give a stable base for the arm cast, the rounded uppermost edge of the medical armour ran around the neck. Like a pullover woven from rock-solid threads, a big piece of fibreglass dressing closely encircled the upper part of the torso between the neckline and the loins. Flawlessly attached to this body-hugging corset, the entire arm was in the stiff hold of the firm bond. Robbing away the movement ability, the SSC swaddled the limb between the armpit and the knuckles, freezing both of the joints of the elbow and the wrist.

Positioned in a pose, which was perpendicular to the trunk cast, the violet shoulder spica cast was kept far apart. To maintain the fixed pose, there was a strong rod bridging the gap between the end of the arm cast and the big shell overlaying the hip. Flexed in a right angle by the elbow, the exposed palm pointed ceilingwards. The uncasted fingers unmovingly jutted out of the narrow but well-padded cast opening.

Creating a thick, firm, and vast custom-made suit of fibreglass armour, the SSC and the hip spica cast overlapped each other on the torso, where the tightly arranged bandages disguised all the pretty curves and contours of Naomi’s body. The rigid layers of the torso cast encircled each bit of the trunk, making such a surface, which was mostly smooth and flat, except for the place over the breasts. On that place, the two tough domes arching over the bosoms were unmissable for anyone.

The lower part of the body was wrapped in a solid cast capsule, as well. Made from violet fibreglass, the one-and-half hip spica cast held the pelvis in its long-term firm grip. The cocoon fastened the hips, and it flew down all along the left leg, disabling it from thigh to toes. The shorter extension of the hip spica cast restricted merely the upper part of the right leg. The two asymmetrical casts were connected with a knee-to-knee rod.

‘Nice big shell,’ I told Gabriel again, glancing at the weighty and rigid stuff, which anchored Naomi in the bed. Only her head, the right arm, and the right shank were free from the paralysing coverage of the stiff bandages. She would have very hard months within the confines of the shell.

‘Indeed, she’d better stay at home next morning,’ Gabriel said. He, too, watched the large cast, which perfectly pinned the girl down. ‘You know... Naomi is a bit important to me because she and I share the same job.’

‘Oh, are both of you full-time supernatural beings?’

‘She is a messenger, too. A bicycle messenger.’

‘I hope that his husband isn’t a boxer. Or a karate champion,’ I said, remembering one of my previous adventures when I had received one or two head-shattering punches from an angered partner, who had misinterpreted my actions.

‘She’s got no husband.’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘Do you want to date with her?’

‘Oh, dear, I just want to know what danger I have to face!’ I sighed.

‘Don’t worry. She’s single, and she’s got only a cat,’ Gabriel assured me.

‘Hopefully, it’s not a mad kitten.’

***

But it wasn’t Naomi’s cat, who got me into trouble.

Like a novice spy, I was walking up and down on the streets around her house. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and at this moment, Naomi was still healthy. According to the time schedule, she would leave home about at half past eight to go to the head office of the company. By bike. And her bicycle was in her house.

This was my problem. I want to have her bike. No bike – no accident: this logical deduction sounded simple even for a philosophically challenged people like me.

8:27 a.m. The door opened. Pushed by Naomi, the first wheel of the bicycle appeared in the entrance. So did Naomi, wearing a bike helmet.

Hey, girl, you would end up in casts, in spite of being so careful – I thought. However, I amended my teasing thoughts. Without this temporary plastic head protector, she could easily get a permanent plaster one. I knew it. Six months had been more than enough for me to experience how confining a head-wrapping Minerva cast could be.

I just watched her, but I knew that I couldn’t stay there forever, without doing anything. I had to act. Standing on the other side of the street, I grabbed my mobile to call her landline phone number.

Hearing the ringing of the phone in the living room, Naomi stopped rolling the bike out of the house. She turned back to answer my fake call. Luckily, she forgot to close the door, and she left the two-wheeler at the opened entrance. Redialling her number again and again, I let her telephone ring non-stop. Of course, I didn’t want to talk to her, but my plan was about creating a kind of diversion. While Naomi was in the house, I ran across the street to get to her door to put my hands on her bike.

Most likely, Gabriel would remind me of one of the Ten Commandment: ‘You shall not steal’. Honestly, it wasn’t about stealing. But it was an unusual form of borrowing. I didn’t want to own her bicycle. Instead, I worked hard to keep it away from Naomi’s disposal. I swore that I would give it back to her when this dangerous day would be over.

To disappear from the crime scene, I calmly sat on the bike and started to ride it. Pushing the pedals hard, I moved away from the scene with the speed of the light. By the time Naomi returned to the entrance, her bike was far away. With me in the saddle.

However, unfortunately, I left some traces behind. As I told you, I wasn’t a professional criminal. I hadn’t mapped the place before committing this crime. Among other things, I hadn’t spotted the surveillance camera installed on a pole, which had recorded all that I had done. And what the worst was, my mobile phone number remained in Naomi’s incoming call list.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 14)     Next (Part 16)-->

The Preventer, Part 14

To my surprise, Jennifer Bunny’s imaginary copy was a spotless beautiful woman, being hotter than even the real one. However, this fact could be a breach of the law of nature, since the original one was overperfect already.

Jennifer stood before me in a modest set of clothes, carrying a file in her right hand. Dressed in the style with which she imitated a university student, she reminded me of the Original Jennifer whom I had met in the ‘bad old’ times when I had been stuck in a full body cast after the accident. I knew her pretty much because we had spent some time together in the real world, therefore my imagination could build up a more or less coherent personality, making this female phantasm an enjoyable talk partner. Indeed, talking with her was much more entertaining than speaking to the blank-minded fashion magazine girls.

‘Hello, cousin!’ The girl teased me by calling me this way.

Of course, Miss Bunny wasn’t a member of my family. This title had been just her disguise so that she could meet me in the medical centre, where we had had happy hours together, behind a shutdown door. Well, it was her profession to make the clients of the Bunny Club happy... Yes, you are right. I feel ashamed. Though nowadays I always talk about Miranda, back in those days I hadn’t had any clue about my lost spouse.

But now Jennifer was here, and her long blonde hair reaching her shoulder drove me crazy, almost blurring Miranda’s faded remembrance. To fight back, I recalled every tiny detail about her. However, it could hardly help me.

‘Your next mission or what,’ Jennifer said mysteriously. She hopped forward to study me closely. Next, having checked my shape, she handed me the folder. The girl saw the discoloured mark on my face, where Mr Swanson’s fist had landed in the final stage of my last mission. ‘Nice bruise. Have you tussled with somebody?’

I decided not to reply. Instead, I ran a kind of test to see her fidelity to the Original Jennifer. I wanted to assess this phenomenon to know if she was much more ‘real’ than the other girls. However, talking about authenticity and originality in an imaginary room is a bit weird, isn’t it?

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘You’re much sillier than you were a year ago, Alex,’ she told me after a good laughter. ‘When the doctors removed your head casts, then they took out your brain, too?’

‘What is your name?’ I repeated the question.

‘Jennifer Bunny,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you anything else because you don’t know the right answer for this question. I’m only the creation of your superficial imagination.’

‘Superficial?’ I asked as this expression was familiar. ‘Has Gabriel talked about it with you?’

‘You firmly believe that this place is yours.’ She extended her arms to spin around. ‘Forget it. It doesn’t belong to you. No, he didn’t need to talk about it since we came from the same place. Of course, you are superficial. We just made love for a couple of times. You don’t know me at all. How could you copy what in my head was? You can recall only my physical figure, and some of my words.’

‘I know you,’ I insisted. ‘You like music. Your life is an endless video clip.’

‘And something more?’ she asked, cutely putting her fingers below her lips. ‘What is my favourite genre of music? Books, movies, hobby? What will I do when I will be too old or too ugly to be a Bunny Girl?’

I failed her fidelity test. I didn’t know even Jennifer Bunny, although I had been with her. Again, I changed the topic.

‘Do you know what this place is?’ I asked.

‘This is the place where you can get a second chance,’ Jennifer replied. She vanished into the air, leaving just a laugh and the medical case file behind.

As soon as the first ‘ghost’ went away, the other came. Gabriel put his hand on my shoulder to signal his arrival.

‘Don’t worry. It’s damn hard to know someone,’ he comforted me.

‘Gabriel, you should have told me that Gina’s husband is a bodybuilder. My chest and my nose still hurt.’ I checked the bruises in the middle part of my face, afterwards, I rubbed the aching ribcage, again.

‘Why do you let it hurt? It’s your imagination. Imagine that it doesn’t hurt, and it won’t hurt,’ he said.

Oh, really. I could never find out how easy it could be for me to fix things in this world. Pulling down an imaginary potentiometer, I decreased the volume of the throbbing I felt. Accordingly, the pain of my injuries faded out.

Then I glanced at Gabriel. Though I couldn’t read his mind, I worked out that he would talk with me about a terrible mistake. Like an earnest teacher, he showed me a thing, which he was hiding behind his back until now. It was my screwdriver, and there was still blood on the tip of the tool, proving the crime I had committed.

‘By the way, what is it?’ Gabriel asked.

‘A screwdriver, I suppose,’ I showed him my most innocent look.

‘Eh, I found this thing in Mr Swanson’s leg. Alex, your task is to prevent injuries. You must not cause new ones,’ he warned me.

‘We focused on the girls with casts so far. Gina is saved. She is healthy, isn’t she? She doesn’t wear any cast, does she? First class job, isn’t it? Mission accomplished.’ I could be proud of my performance. Except for the tiny incident, which had happened to her husband.

‘We don’t need any more collateral damage, okay? You must regret it, and you must make it good. Or else, I must look for a new Preventer,’ Gabriel reminded me of the rules. Then he went toward the bed. ‘This is the third female to be saved. So, what can you find in the file you got from Jennifer?’

‘Martina Lemmon,’ I said, and began assessing the patient.

To be frank, the female wasn’t too likeable for me. The serious woman was dressed in the suits of the dull downtown-dwelling businesspersons.

As a result of an accident-to-be, a big chunk of a blue fibreglass long cast encased her whole right leg. The tube-like shell was so extended that the rounded upper rims of the thick dressings nearly rubbed her loins. Flowing down from there, the rigid coating encompassed the whole thigh and froze the knee. The straight cast was shaped nicely to follow the faint arch of the slightly flexed joint. Running down, the cylinder leg cast fixed the shanks but it stopped just over the ankle. Free from the medical confinement, the uncasted foot and toes were exposed to air.

From a certain point of view, her left leg was a bit luckier than the other one, since it sported merely a short yet confining leg cast. Tightly encircling the wounded body member, the stiff bandages locked down everything, which was below the knee. The SLC started at the middle part of the leg, just below the knee joint. The shank, the ankle, and even all the toes were in its firm hold. Restricting the foot, the cast ‘boot’ finished in something that was a dumpling-like knot of bulky bandages, which embedded all bit of the lowest part, including all the toes.

Missing either a toe opening or a toe plate, the SLC was fully closed, and all the digits were buried deep in their separate gauze-cells within the inch-thick fibreglass prison.

‘Martina was... or will be run over in a pedestrian crossing,’ I read out the facts. ‘Right after having lunch, she was rushing back to her office.’

***

So, Martina Lemmon was having lunch by the table in the opposite corner of the restaurant. Looking at her, I found a better name for this serious woman. I called her Miss Lemon. Glancing at her, I couldn’t see anything attractive on her. Insignificant pastel brown dress. Boring. Hair in a decent bun. Dull. Neat but unfashionable pair of glasses.

I watched as she called the waiter there to settle the invoice. Martina was about to leave to walk under a car in the nearest zebra crossing, so I had to do something. As if we were synchronised swimmers, we moved in parallel. While she stood up by her table, I got up, too, keeping an eye on her.

I left my box, with a cup of coffee in my hand. Imitating that I was looking for a more suitable place, I crossed the whole restaurant to get closer to her. I was just walking past her table when my right leg elegantly tripped over the left one. Of course, this almost-fall was intentional. To find support, I grabbed the edge of her table, but (un)fortunately, with a well-planned motion, I dropped the coffee cup. Stumbling over the table, I managed to pour the whole content of the cup onto her clothes. The dark fluid landed on Martina’s lap and quickly gushed down on her clothes, creating a gigantic brown stain on the light-coloured blouse and skirt.

Shocked, Martina looked down at the soaked dress, then she peered at me, the barbarian, who devastated her expensive designer suit.

‘What have you done, mister?’ Ms Lemmon shouted to my face.

Well, she wasn’t the calm and quiet lady anymore, whom she looked to be. Once again, Martina checked her clothes to assess the disaster, which happened to her. With despaired hand movements, she tried to wipe off the dirt from the dress. Of course, in vain.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I lied.

‘Sh*t, I must go home to change clothes,’ she hissed with a low voice. Not for me, just for herself.

Oh, yes, I did it! I managed to turn upside down her daily schedule. Fantastic. Martina wouldn’t go back to the office. She wouldn’t go across the zebra crossing. If I hadn’t been here, she would have been yelling from pain in an ambulance. This woman must have been grateful for me because I saved her. Well, dealing with a coffee stain would be much better than living with two leg casts and attending business meetings with a pair of crutches or in a wheelchair.

But Martina didn’t know the future, but she knew her sad present very well. Her glance nearly killed me because I dared ruin her two-thousand dollar business dress.

‘I’m so sorry. Certainly, I’ll cover all your cost, Ma’am,’ I apologised.

Also, I gave her my business card to let her know my address to where she would send the invoice of the dry cleaners or a new set of clothes. But disclosing my identity was the first mistake I made, and this very card was one of the proofs, which helped Detective Hallmundsdóttir to arrest me.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 13)     Next (Part 15)-->

The Preventer, Part 13

My consciousness drifted into the imaginary hospital room, where the first person I met was a nurse. This time I looked bored at her. Her attractiveness wasn’t able to captivate me anymore. Analysing, I figured out why I had wanted to change her hair colour and why I had wished a pair of glasses for her. Somehow, my subconscious had aspired to recreate Miranda. The hair colour and spectacles... This was everything that I knew about my wife. Just some worthless pieces of memory, torn parts of a bigger picture that had been destroyed aeons ago. Her hair was long, curly and black. And she wore glasses. Damn memory. Damn accident.

‘My name is Miranda,’ she echoed the thoughts that I had planted into her earlier.

I greeted her with a short ‘Hello’.

‘Here’s the newest case, Doctor.’ Her intonation was seducing.

Gabriel had been right. This cute nurse was merely an empty shell. I missed Miranda, in spite of the fact that I didn’t know her. I missed so much. Sounds paradox?

‘Gabriel, I saw that you sent this girl away,’ I said to my ‘advisor’ as he appeared on the stage. ‘Have you called her back to put me to a test?’

‘We do not lead you into temptation, Alex.’ He looked at our strange couple, namely me and the nurse. ‘Your old-self has just recreated this ersatz-Miranda.’

‘You should have chosen somebody else to be a Preventer. I’ve saved Shelly’s arms, but I’ve broken her heart.’ I could have been proud that I had managed to prevent my first ‘patient’ from suffering an accident. However, I felt that I had hurt her soul while saving her body.

‘I’m sorry but I’m not the one, who chooses the patients for you,’ Gabriel apologised. Though, his next question mocked me. ‘And, wow, are you able to feel sorry for someone?’

‘Incredibly, she fell in love with me. I think it was a love at first sight, or rather at first touch or what,‘ I told him the story about the strange ‘date’ with the blind girl. ‘I had to refuse her. Because of Miranda. Does it sound crazy enough?’

‘No worries. Shelly won’t kill herself because of you. She’ll find her perfect match next month. He’ll be much better than you.’

‘Can you see her future?’

‘Of course, I can,’ Gabriel nodded.

‘Can you see my future, too?’

‘Yes, but I can’t tell you anything about it. Or else, what would happen to your free will?’ He tried to lure me into an endless philosophical discussion about the freedom of choice and determinism. ‘You can’t know what is going to happen to you, but you can see her future,’ he told me, pointing at the hospital bed.

In the middle of the room, the next ‘patient’ was waiting for me. I had her medical report in my hand already, received it from the imaginary nurse, who had already gone away. I enthusiastically opened the folder.

‘You slowly became a real Preventer,’ Gabriel praised me for my devotion.

Well, right now I knew what would drive me forward. I wanted my wife back. Instead of blood, 100% motivation circulated in my body. Gabriel headed to the bed, and I faithfully followed him.

‘So, this is Mrs Gina Swanson.’ I peered at the female having a light brown hair reaching her shoulders. Then I started to read out the first page of the file. ‘Aged 31, two fractured shanks.’

The woman wore dual short leg casts. The size and the shape of the twin casts were the same. Constructed from fibreglass tissue, the two tight-fitting shells encased the entire lower parts of both legs. The well-shaped and padded upper rims encircled the limbs around the knee joints. The rigid casts started just below the kneecaps, leaving them free, and then they solidly flowed down, closely following the fine outlines of shanks. The firm grip of the medical fetters cripplingly imprisoned the ankles, and locked the feet in a fastened position, enfolding everything ending up at the toes.

Due to the overly reinforced and thick soles, the leg casts were similar to a pair of shoes with ultra-high platforms, completed with palm-sized rubber walking heels, which were glued to the undersurface of the DSLWCs.

As an extension to the left cast, enormous toe spica casts were created to keep fixed all the five extremities. Tenderly swaddled in the soft cradle of the inner gauze layers, and securely captured below the outside protective shield of casts, the toes were mostly invisible, so, merely their tiny tips could be seen. Differing from the closed cast disabling the left leg, the leg cast on the right leg had an opening for the toes. Here the toes freely expanded out of the well-padded ‘mouth of the cave’ of the fibreglass shell, and they rested on a big, balcony-like cast toe plate, which safely sheltered them from being rammed into anything.

‘A car accident. Again?’ I said after reading the rest of the report.

‘Traffic is a dangerous business. Drivers must be careful,’ Gabriel said.

I turned the pages of the case file, trying to memorise the exact place and date of the accident before my vision would be over.

***

In the real world, I was sitting in my real car near the real house of the real Mrs Gina Swanson. Keeping my eyes on the building that was on the opposite side of the road, I was forging nonsense ideas about how I could prevent her accident.

I looked at my watch. The time flew away, and I still had no usable plan. Merely thirty minutes left until the crash. Gina would leave home soon. After driving along a street, she would be busy with sending a text message, and she would miss stopping before a ‘Stop’ sign and... bang. You can easily figure out what would follow. She would break both of her legs in the accident, and she would get a lovely pair of short leg casts, and she would be confined to beds, wheelchairs and crutches in the following months.

So what to do to prevent all this from happening? Would I knock on the door, and when she would appear, would I directly tell her not to go anywhere? I bet that she wouldn’t believe me. Or should I try to follow her with my car, and overtake her before the stop sign? What if we would push each other’s car into the busy traffic of the main road? Honestly, I didn’t want any cast to disable me anymore.

Merely twenty minutes left, so I had to do something. And I voted for taking drastic measures. For some reason, Gina’s red Chevrolet didn’t park in the garage but it was left on the drive in front of the house. Unattended.

Great! Having a weird idea, I smiled. Though my action would be a bit extreme, Gina wouldn’t go anywhere this afternoon.

I got out of my car with a screwdriver in my hand. This time, instead of being a low-budget Preventer, I would have liked to be some Grade ‘A’ Superhero, let’s say the Invisible Man. But I could cross the road unnoticed (or, at least, I thought I could), and I sneaked to the vehicle. When I got there, I crouched down at the left front side. Next, with all my force, I pushed the sharp tip of the tool into the tyre. I was so relieved when I heard the hissing sound as the pressurised air was escaping its rubber prison. I managed to pierce one out of the four tyres.

But I didn’t stop. I went around the front side to kill the other wheels as well. The plan was brutally simple. And easy to carry out. With four punctured tyres, Gina had to remain at home. As an option, she could call a taxi. Hopefully, she would hire such a cab driver, who wouldn’t miss the stop sign.

I worked hard, and I could already tick off three flat wheels in my short to-do list. Eagerly, I was about to begin to deal with the last one, when a couple of unnecessary things appeared in my field of view. Two black shoes, and a shadow of a sturdy man.

‘Hey, buddy, what the hell are you doing with my car?’ a deep voice thundered to me.

From my frog perspective, I looked up at the source of the sound. Then I made a mistake. I stopped crouching, and I tried to stand up when a stone-hard fist fell on my face. The hit smashed my nose, and its momentum pushed me back to the ground, where I sprawled out. I couldn’t defend my body from even the second wave of the strike when the kick of the heavy boot arrived at my stomach.

But the third blow missed me because I could crawl toward the attacker, and I still had the tool in my hand. For a minute, the simple screwdriver turned into a dangerous weapon, and I wasn’t afraid to use it. The attack is the best form of defence – I murmured since I didn’t want to return to a full body cast.

Forcefully, I pushed the screwdriver into the flesh of the attacker’s right foot.

Oh, what a yell I could hear! Receding from me, the assailant staggered back to find support at the side of the Chrysler. He was tortured by the pain radiating up from his wounded leg, from which a screwdriver was sticking out.

For long seconds, the stabbed man was occupied with his throbbing injury. This short intermission was enough for me to exploit the window of opportunity. Mr Swanson was stronger than me, but with a screwdriver in his foot, I was the one who the faster was. I stood up from the dusty ground, and I ran away like the wind.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 12)     Next (Part 14)-->

The Preventer, Part 12

Although I returned to the unreal place, my thoughts flew far away. My mood was different from the confidence of the first days. Stricken, I didn’t tramp proudly in the room. Instead, I was sitting on the floor, collapsed, waiting for Gabriel to appear.

I heard knocking of heels, sounds of approaching steps. I didn’t raise my head up to see her. It was useless because she couldn’t be Miranda. Having opened my eyes, I saw only the legs up to the knees, dressed in black silk stockings. She was a nurse, an ordinary one, bringing me the dossier written about the next assignment. I didn’t greet the messenger, either. Being a creature of my imagination, she mirrored my rejecting emotions. Impolitely, she dropped down the file, which thudded on the floor before me, and she turned around to leave this weird place without telling me anything.

But I didn’t give a sh*t to it. Miranda’s death tore a part of my soul away. I was in a downturn, so deep that there was nothing in this or that word that could compare this terrible feeling.

Sounds of steps again. Not as loud as high heels. More silent. Sports shoes. This time, it was Gabriel, who was coming.

‘This is crazy. How can I miss somebody, whom I even don’t remember? Bring her back,’ I begged.

‘Please, stand up,’ he said.

‘Bring her back.’

‘This is not so easy to do, Alex. Raising Miranda from the dead is beyond my authority. And I’ve told you that you must save seven females to get your reward. You must prevent their accidents so that you can get your wife back.’

‘Really?’

Gabriel bent down to pick up the file lying on the floor before my legs.

‘For Christ’s sake, pull yourself together and stand up. You should see her.’

‘Her? Miranda?’ I didn’t hope in such an early reunion.

‘Oh, no. Just the next female to be saved. Please meet Ms Shelly Fisher,’ he said, pointing at the hospital bed.

I got up and I turned around to see the next patient. Shelly was probably in her late twenties, and she had broken both of her arms. And all her fingers, too. Because of their bright yellow colour, the two long arm casts were impossible to miss. Moulded from fibreglass, the vast pieces of casts started just below the armpits, encased the fine shapes of the upper limbs, creating a pair of identical solid full shells, which flowed down to cover the lower parts, too, just to wrap every bit up to the fingertips.

Considering their features, such as material, size and colour, the two arm casts were basically the same. However, there were striking differences. The right one was just slightly flexed at the elbow, so the arm was frozen in a nearly straight pose. The bandaged limb rested on a row of pillows along the body. This LAC finished in a boxing-glove-like set of dressings. The roundish form tightly held all the fingers, which were bent toward the palm. Even the wounded thumb spica was integrated into the block of cast, being together with the other digits. As such a bulky cast sphere engulfed the right hand, it was impossible to locate the individual fingers.

The cast on the left arm was unlike in position. Neatly flexed at the elbow, the classically shaped LAC was like a big yellow letter ‘L’, rocked on her lap. The stiff bandages restricted the limb from shoulder to fingertips. The injured extremities were straight-posed within the medical embedment, which was shaped like a gargantuan kitchen glove. Similar to a short but sturdy pole, a separate thumb spica cast poked out of the bulky base of the cast swaddling the hand.

After seeing her casts, I checked Shelly’s face too. Strangely, the girl was wearing a pair of pitch-black sunglasses even when being in bed. The reason behind this wasn’t an excessive fashion awareness.

‘Is she blind?’ I asked. Weirdly, the stylish glasses perfectly suited her dark wavy hair.

‘It isn’t easy for a blind to look after herself when both of her arms in casts, which includes all the fingers. Alex, you must prevent this accident.’

I looked at Shelly again. She was sleeping or just lying motionless in the bed. I couldn’t talk to any of these patients since they were only images borrowed from a possible future. I looked at the DLAC, which would make her totally dependent on non-stop help.

‘What will happen?’ I asked.

‘Just read her file, and you’ll know everything,’ Gabriel said and disappeared.

***


The time was late in the afternoon, and the tired Sun projected long shadows on the walls of the outdoor flight of stairs. Escaping from the daily round of squirrel cage, the nervous people were hustling each other in the crowded streets. Pressing my back against the wall, I tried to keep away from the chaotic stream. It was so hard to believe that I myself had been a part of this pushy crowd a year ago.

Countless men and women rushed past me. I damned, thinking that it wouldn’t be easy to spot Shelly in this horde. However, it wasn’t her face, which I noticed for the first time. But a rhythmical sound of ticks... Tick-tick-tick... It was the repeating noise she made with the white cane. Coming toward the subway, Shelly was walking tightly along the wall, while she kept swinging the thin stick to kick it against the concrete pavement or the bricks of the building or eventually against the legs of the careless people.

Suddenly a businessman got there to cross Shelly’s way. Hunting for an unmissable money-making opportunity, he was talking on the phone. Immersed in the conversation, he heavily gesticulated with his free left hand. Doing so, the fellow inadvertently pushed the blind girl’s back when he was hurrying away behind her. Without turning around, he said a hardly audible ‘Sorry!’, and he walked away without looking back.

However, for Shelly, the elbowing incident was serious. Standing on the top step of a steep staircase, she was kicked out of her balance. Her arms swept around in the air, finding nobody and nothing to help her, and she began falling down the stairs. The businessman’s short apologetic word, which he had automatically produced, wasn’t able to save Shelly, and it wouldn’t be able to comfort her while she would have to cope with the plague of two long arm casts in the next month. However, I was sent here to change her future.

Instead of taking a tumble, and rolling down the stairs to break both of her arms and smash all the fingers, Shelly directly landed in my hands. It took a couple of seconds for her to assimilate what happened. For a short time, I was holding her in my arms, however, soon I helped her to stand on her own legs.

‘Thank you very much, mister,’ she said. Feeling in safe again, she leaned against the wall. Casually, she pushed up her sunglasses back to the bridge of her nose. ‘You’ve saved my day.’

Maybe your arms, too, I added in my mind. I grabbed for the stick, which I brought back to her.

‘My pleasure,’ I said since it was a real pleasure to hold her in my arms. Maybe, it’s worth doing business with Gabriel?

Tick... tick... With short and quick movements, she mapped the place around her with the cane. Regaining her confidence, she was about to descend the stairs to go away. Yet, she stopped and turned back to me.

‘What about having a coffee together? I hope that you aren’t a pushy capitalist like that asshole, who almost killed me.’ Shelly awarded me with a nice smile.

‘Eh, capitalist? You mean that...’ I asked in amazement. Maybe wasn’t she totally blind? ‘Have you seen the one, who...? Oh, I thought that you’re...’

‘Yes, I’m blind.’ She checked the position of the dark glasses once again. ‘Money doesn’t stink but they do. I know a good cafe near here. I’m Shelly. Come with me.’

‘My name is Alex.’

Contrary to the famous saying, now it was the blind one, who led me, the two-eyed one through the labyrinth of streets. After getting to the outlying yet fine café, Shelly greeted the waitresses, who told her that the table nine was free. The blind girl stopped sweeping the floor with the crane. She elevated the white stick with confidence, and she walked straight across the place to find the unreserved table easily. Twenty-six steps forward, then five more to the left. The layout of the familiar place had already been burnt into her memory.

Feeling home in this friendly corner of the world, Shelly looked like an over-fashioned young girl with her black glasses. Not weird, but a little bit strange. She leant the white stick against the wall of our box, however, she didn’t take off the sunglasses.

‘Okay, Alex, I’d like to thank you once again for saving my life,’ she chatted.

To sweeten the coffee, her tiny hand started clumsily hunting for a sugar cube on the table. I touched her palms to guide her hands to find it. I sensed the softness of her palms, and her fingers were thin and silky. I was proud. I could save from this fragile girl from the peril of casts.

‘Thanks,’ she said for my help, and she added sadly. ‘Ah, my life is an endless “Thank you.” ...Excuse me, can I touch your face?’ Her question came out of the blue.

At first, I nodded, however, I realised she couldn’t sense my gesture.

‘Of course,’ I said, instead of simply moving my head.

She stretched out her right hand, toward the direction of my voice, with wiggling fingers in the air. I helped her to find my face. She smiled, without saying one more thank-you. With her fingers, she ‘scanned’ my look. The skimming began at the forehead, and it went around the eyes, touching my cheekbones to end around the jaw.

‘Handsome.’

‘Thanks.’

Her arms moved back to find the coffee mug. Her look changed, as Shelly prepared for telling me something important.

‘Please, don’t think that I went crazy... but I feel that you were sent from the heaven to save me. Can you imagine... Can you imagine that you can love me?’

Her question was like a lightning striking directly into my brain. Maybe, Shelly had special gifts, but she misinterpreted the reason why I was here with her. Or was it Gabriel’s newest trick to test me? Or was this girl terribly lonely? Cornered, I didn’t know what to answer.

‘Shelly...,’ I said.

And I stopped since you didn’t need to tell anything more for a blind. It was only a short word, yet she was able to process the intonation. There’s a problem on my side.

‘There’s a problem,’ she said, stopping stirring the coffee. Next, she began to guess randomly. ‘Because I’m blind.’

‘Oh, no,’ I replied.

‘You’ve got somebody.’ She lifted her head as if she could look into my eyes. I saw my reflection in the black lenses.

‘I’ve lost somebody whom I must find. My life is too messy, and you are a better person than me. I don’t deserve you. I’m sorry,’ I whispered and I got up.

Personally, my straight answer troubled even me. Before my accident, I used to screw almost every girl I had met. How could I refuse her? I was terribly missing Miranda. The woman whom I didn’t know. The wife whom I had killed.

Hearing the noise of my leaving, Shelly began to weep.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 11)     Next (Part 13)-->

The Preventer, Part 11

I found the blonde nurse in the Imaginary Place. Although I had made the girl different when I had modified her hair colour, now she was the same again. The tall, unchanged chick without spectacles was standing in the middle of the room to receive me.

‘Dr Robertson, here’s the file for you,’ she told me, smiling.

Having done her job, she turned around to leave. I halted her. The previous time when we had met, I could alter some of her features. Right now, it was the highest time to try out what would happen after a bold wish.

Please, be naked. Following my untold instruction, the tight nurse uniform, which dressed her cute figure, disappeared, with all her underwear. The power of my thoughts took her clothes off, yet she remained standing in front of me, calmly yet twinkling, naked as if this scene had been so ordinary for both of us. A naked nurse in the middle of an imaginary hospital room, talking to a false doctor. Stunned by the sight, I adored the nearly perfectly shaped parts of her body. Her velvety skin was just lightly suntanned, since, of course, she was the output of my adult dreams.

‘What’s your name?’ I looked into her eyes.

She didn’t reply. I worked out that her name was missing from my memories. Clearly, her stupidity was my mistake. I had forgotten her name, as it hadn’t been important for me, though it had been written in the caption below the photo in the fashion magazine that had fascinated me so much a decade ago.

‘Your name is Miranda,’ I wished, untold.

Embarrassingly, I picked out this name again. I didn’t know the reason. Simply, sometimes this name raided my mind, forcibly gushing up from my unconscious, and I wasn’t able to get it out of my head. But why not?

‘My name is Miranda,’ she said.

‘Do you know what this place is?’

‘I know what this place is,’ she echoed.

‘Stop it, please.’ Coming from nothing, Gabriel came between us again. He addressed the first sentence to me, noticing the naked nurse in the room. ‘Alex, you’ve gone too far this time.’

Then he spoke to the girl, too. ‘Please, leave this room and never came back.’

The clothless girl, whom I called Miranda, turned around and went to the door. With a graceful movement, she opened it and stepped out to disappear in the black emptiness beyond the gate.

‘She had black hair last time.’ I secretly mourned the gorgeous woman, but I decided not to complain about her dismissal to Gabriel.

Meanwhile, my companion bent down to reach for the abandoned file on the floor.

‘Blonde chicks, this is your default setting. You forgot to save changes,’ he said dryly. ‘You abused my trust, and you don’t deserve to meet your imaginary girls ever again. Anyway, you shouldn’t have talked to them. It was not forbidden but it was useless. They’ve got cute figures, but their insides are empty. I mean that you knew merely their body configurations, but you couldn’t learn their personality from a printed magazine page. Thus, they always mirrored your emotions and echoed your words. They were nothing more than the creation of your superficial imagination.’

‘You could be more polite,’ I felt insulted.

‘Why? This is the truth. It’s clear that you’re still obsessed with your pretty imaginary chicks. And you don’t even notice how incredibly hard I work to change this attitude. Oh, I promised that I would show you something motivating so that I can fully involve you in our prevention business, didn’t I?’

‘Do you want to shock me with an empty bed?’ I asked, missing the patient-to-be. In my previous visions, there was always a broken female in the room.

‘What empty bed?’ Gabriel asked, and stylishly swung his hand in the air. However, he added: ‘Of course, this trick works without hand movements, too, but it’s more spectacular with them.’

‘What trick?’ I was hardly able to ask since somebody appeared on the bed.

The patient, who arrived there was my nameless passenger in coma, who had suffered very serious injuries in the car accident. In my accident... in our car accident, which had seemingly happened a damn long time ago. Now I was already free of casts, while she was still captured in the land of dreamless dreams. Understandably, without a working brain, it would be very hard for her to stay alive. Thus, she was kept alive by machines. But I didn’t know whether this medically supported existence could be called ‘life’ at all. Literally, it was an endlessly extended dying.

A cabinet-sized medical ventilator had her breathed, pressing air into the lame lungs via a wide plastic tube. The pipe ended in an oxygen mask, which was big enough to cover most of the lower face. Her chest periodically went up and down, according to a boring, mechanical rhythm, which the medical air pump beat.


‘This is Ms Jane Doe,’ Gabriel gestured toward her.

‘I know who she is. Or rather, I don’t know who she is,’ I said in confusion. ‘Oh, sh*t, Gabriel you know what I mean.’

This time Gabriel didn’t warn me about using a dirty word. He just nodded.

‘Do you really want to motivate me with showing her to me? I can’t save her. The accident happened almost a year ago. This is not her future but the present. Give me a time machine, and I’ll prevent it.’

‘It doesn’t go so easily, Alex,’ he said.

‘If you know all my thoughts, you know what I told Dr Rehnquist about her.’

‘She is still alive,’ he said, looking at his watch.

‘You told me that you would show me the possible future of the patients. This is not the future,’ I said again. My arm pointed nervously at the girl, who limply lied in the bed. ‘I can’t do anything for her.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. This isn’t her future but her miserable present,’ Gabriel said. ‘Her future isn’t a coma care department but... this place.’

In the middle of the room, the image of the tidy hospital bed disappeared. Instead of it, I saw a small and insignificant tombstone with a short inscription. The sight of the lonely grave, which stood in a hidden corner of an emerald-green meadow of a cemetery, was endlessly sad.
Jane Doe
No. 2/2015

‘Will she die?’ I asked.

‘Of course. Within hours. As you wanted.’ His silent reply accused me.

‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t my mistake.’

‘Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to yourself, either. You’ve killed her.’

‘Dr Rehnquist and the other doctors will kill her when they unplug the breathing machine.’

‘Alex, Alex, you’re lying again.’

‘Why do you show her to me? I can’t do anything to save her.’ I insisted on saying this, and I was sure that I was right. ‘The accident has already happened. I don’t know the name of this b*tch. Even the police weren’t able to identify her.’

‘Stop calling her b*tch. She is not a b*tch at all.’

Feeling disgusted, Gabriel repeated the dirty word I used. However, he did it just to prepare me for the next stage of the lesson. And he managed to accomplish it: the next sixty seconds threw a new light on my miserable life. Suddenly, the writing on the memorial changed. The old letters faded out, and new signs appeared on it. Though it was still a short inscription, I had to read it twice to grasp it.

There were five words and two numbers engraved with golden letters on the weather-worn gravestone:
Miranda Robertson
the forgotten wife
1987 – 2015

Gabriel’s words punched directly in my heart: ‘I’d like to introduce your late wife to you.’

***

‘This must be one of your cheap tricks. That girl cannot be my wife,’ I shouted at him.

I didn’t look at Gabriel, who was sitting in the passenger seat, because I had to watch the road. Dodging the city traffic, the car rushed toward the hospital with a crazy speed, and my feet nervously pushed the accelerator pedal down to the floor. Unfortunately, Dr Rehnquist didn’t answer any of my phone calls, so I had to go to the hospital personally.

‘Why cannot Miranda be your wife?’ my damn companion asked.

‘Where is my wedding ring?’ I put my ringless right hand directly before his face. Juggling, merely my sweaty left palm grasped the steering wheel.

‘You bought a pair of extra expensive rings for Miranda and you. Both of these luxurious jewels were stolen while you were treated in hospital. You know, there is always someone who can be greedier than a stock exchange broker.’

‘Photos?’

‘It was a fresh marriage. You took just a few pictures. And your computer and mobile were destroyed in the car crash. This is the drawback of living digitally. And you home was burnt down. No pictures left.’

‘The police couldn’t identify her. What about the marriage registry?’

‘She’s a foreign citizen, and you got married abroad. There had to be an administrative or computer error, and the info didn’t get through the bureaucratic labyrinth to the federal authorities. No system can be perfect.’

‘I don’t believe any of your words.’

‘Yet you’re rushing to the hospital like a madman. Please, slow down if you don’t want to get into a full body cast once again. We should be visitors and not patients.’ He told me while grabbing the safety belt, being a bit concerned about my overspeeding driving style. ‘By the way, if you don’t trust in me, ask yourself why you don’t stop longing to meet a black-haired and bespectacled girl called Miranda all the time.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,’ I kept repeating to an empty seat because Gabriel had vanished.

The brakes let out a loud screech as I halted the car in a no-parking zone by the hospital entrance. Without closing the door, I jumped out of the car to run into the coma care department. Building B, Second Floor, Room Sixteen. I still knew where the room was, though I hadn’t been here for months. Since my trial, I didn’t need the living dead girl. The girl, who might be my wife.

After the rush, I didn’t open but tore out the room door to see her. A soul-killing darkness received me there. I didn’t need to switch the light on to find out how the things stood. I arrived too late. The room was cleared out by now. I didn’t see the fade lights of the monitoring devices, and I didn’t hear the rhythmical noise of the artificial respiration, either.

‘Oh, Mr Robertson,’ Dr Rehnquist said, finding me in the room. His voice coming from the corridor almost haunted me. ‘Sadly for us, it’s too late to change your mind.’

Telling me nothing more, he left. I went into the room and turned on the lights to be sure. Deadly silence embraced me. The world was a bare place without Miranda. In the room, there was nothing else but an empty bed. The bed was made, with fresh and good-smelling white bedclothes, waiting to caress the next coma patient.

The quietness and emptiness drove me crazy. Her absence pushed its sharp knife deeply into my soul. I’ve killed my wife.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 10)     Next (Part 12)-->

The Preventer, Part 10

Lessoned by my adventure with the unsaved Melanie, I was a bit more concerned about the prevention task when Gabriel invited me to the imaginary meeting place again. At first, the glamour-model-like nurse was already waiting there. I adored this chick, whom Gabriel had created for me to make this sterile chamber into a homely room. Long legs, slim body, well-shaped breasts, nicely curved features, curly, long, blonde hair reaching her shoulders.

I smiled at her, and the beaming female responded with a kind look at me, too. She approached me to hand over a new patient case file over. Oh, my new mission. To be honest, this assignment stuff was the most boring part, because I was fed up with seeing broken and casted females since my full body cast experience. Instead, I focused on the nurse, who was born from a perfectly polished piece of my memory. On the spur of the moment, I had an idea, and I felt an urge to try it out. I supposed, if she was really the product of my imagination, I was able to change her configuration easily.

You are a girl with black hair. Look! I really ruled this world. The nurse’s hair colour changed from light to dark in a blink of an eye. Or much faster. As if she hadn’t been in aware of the modification, she was still smiling at me.

I wish she would wear a pair of glasses. Suddenly, spectacles materialised on her face. With its dark frame, the eyewear perfectly suited her coal-black hair colour.

If only she could be called Miranda.

‘Hello, my name is Miranda.’ The way she whispered was so attractive that it gave me goosebumps. Moreover, she stepped closer to kiss me.

‘Everybody stop!’ Appearing in the room, Gabriel raised his arm to halt our little affair.

With tilted head, the girl froze in the middle of the movement. Gabriel went to us and lightly slapped my face. The stock-still nurse suddenly became vapour, and the folder, which she had been holding in her hands, fell down to the floor.

‘Hey, man, you aren’t here to date with imaginary girls,’ he explained why he hit me. Then he pointed at the new patient lying in the bed in the middle of the room. ‘This is why you’re here. I hope you won’t miss her accident this time.’

Following Gabriel, I headed to the bed, which carried the heavy load of an overly casted patient. With a sudden movement, my companion uncovered the blanket hiding the woman’s body. Although she was unveiled, I couldn’t see the naked skin but a big orange-coloured cast coverage, and a small piece of blue cloth drawn over the loins. The patient was firmly packed in a fibreglass shell, which expanded from the feet up to her neck.

‘She’s Carla Burns. 27 years old,’ Gabriel read the file, which he had picked up from the floor.

‘Nice huge casts,’ I acknowledged their dimensions. ‘Almost as big as my old full body cast.’

‘This is an extended double hip spica cast,’ he said.

Merely the head and the two arms were exposed, so the incredibly extensive rind enveloped all other parts of her body. The upper part of the DHS compactly embraced her torso, while both of the legs were in the firm wrapping of the lower part of the contiguous medical shell. The limbs were held in a wide spread-angle position, forced apart by two bars which ran between the knees and bridged over the gap between the ankles. Even the toes were tightly swaddled, thus only the pink tips of the toes could come to the surface of the frozen ocean of casts.

Making them absolutely formless, the overdone bandages handicapped the full feet and the ankles, and they ran up, closely following the fine shape of the legs to disable the knees and to capture the pelvis, where the leg casts neatly merged into the main casts set over the body.

Perfectly nested into this bulky one-piece cocoon, the torso was dressed in a fittingly arranged costume fashioned from stiff bandages, which started at the loins and went up to the armpits. The body-hugging solid suit firmly wrapped her chest as well as the abdomen. The firm sheets of fibreglass bandages tenderly covered and supported even the breasts, forming two marvellous hemispheres emerging from the boringly flat surface of the cast jacket.

‘What happened? Or what will happen?’ I asked again, as I knew that all this was just an image from a possible future.

‘A car accident at the junction of the 7th Avenue and the 12th Street,’ Gabriel said, reading the report. Or at least, he pretended reading, since, most likely, Gabriel knew the future by heart. ‘Don’t forget the time: at half past four in the afternoon, tomorrow. Don’t miss it.’

***

On the following day, at quarter past four in the afternoon, I was sitting in a quiet restaurant close to the mentioned junction, peacefully stirring a cup of hot coffee. Though I had been in Gabriel’s world for twice already, I didn’t know whether I could trust what I had seen there. So, I hadn’t endeavoured to prevent the accident. Instead, I had come here to test the trueness of the revelation. This table by the windows was an excellent place to see the intersection. Waiting for the accident, I flashed an impatient glance at my watch.

‘Good to see you here,’ a familiar voice greeted me, coming somewhere from behind my back.

‘Oh, my God.’ I turned my head up to see him. I didn’t want Gabriel to be here right now.

‘Eh, what about the second commandment?’ he warned me.

‘Thou shalt not put too much sugar in thy coffee?’

‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,’ Gabriel said while he took a seat opposite to me.

‘What is that?’ I extended my arm to point at the unmissable binoculars, which clang before his chest. The strap holding the field glasses was loosely put over his neck.

‘You don’t like it?’

‘You look like a crazy European tourist,’ I adored his T-shirt that was fully painted with palm trees and monkeys. ‘Gabriel, you’re really a f******g crazy European tourist,’ I told him, after discovering a big bag of popcorn, too, carried in his right hand.

‘You told me that you would watch your language,’ he warned me, again, and he put some popcorn into his mouth.

Afterwards, he raised the binoculars before his eyes to watch the busy junction. Wearing the ugly shirt, using the unfittingly big field glasses and eating the popcorn, Gabriel seemed to be a mad sea captain, who wanted to go to cinema but got lost somewhere on the way.

‘Gabriel, what are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘The same as you do. Waiting for the accident,’ he said and he tenderly knocked the wristwatch crystal to urge the time. ‘And what are you doing here?’

‘You told me not to miss the accident.’

‘Hey, hey, there is some basic misunderstanding between us.’ He leant on the table to be closer to me. ‘Your task is to prevent accidents and not to monitor them. You are Mr Preventer and not Mr Watcher, right? Have I forgotten to tell it to you?’

‘Why do you ask me if you already know all the answers?’ I replied.

But there was no time for us to debate any further, since I spotted a blue Ford trying to run through the junction, violating the red light. The time was 4:29 p.m. So, most probably it was Carla’s car. She dodged some vehicles, but, she quickly ran out of luck. Her car was heavily banged on the left side by a massive SUV. Hit hard, Carla’s Ford turned over. The crash stopped the smooth flow of the traffic. Not knowing the accident, some drivers vainly honked their horns to fix the traffic jam. What a mess, I thought. And I was responsible for it. At least, partially.

‘I hope that you liked it,’ my mentor said, putting his binoculars down.

‘Gabriel, I think you’re here to make me ridiculous,’ I supposed.

‘Exactly. I’d like to help you but you always ruin everything,’ Gabriel replied. He suddenly changed his rhetorical style, and he offered me his paper bag: ‘Would you like to have some popcorn?’

‘Thanks.’ My hand sank into the big bag. ‘It’s like a free 3D movie,’ I felt like being in a film theatre, seeing the mess in the crossroad, and eating popcorn.

Crying and shouting people in the street. Curious crowd. Disaster tourists. Like-hunters taking pictures or shooting videos to upload the events to social media platforms. Endless wailing of sirens. Ambulance. Police cars. You name it.

‘Have you read that bloody book already?’ Gabriel hopped to another topic.

Realising the annoyed style, he remorsefully turned his head up, looking skywards, maybe waiting for a lightning and thunder or some other horrible punishment. And then he cast his eyes down. ‘Forgive me. I’m sorry. Really. This stupid guy made me so angry.’

Obviously, he wasn’t talking to me. But about me. By the way, I easily worked out that the ‘book’ was the Bible, which Sister Mary Alice had given to me in the hospital. I shook my head.

‘Money is your god,’ he said simply, giving me a ten-dollar banknote.

‘Thank you.’

‘You work with money all the time, and you have never ever noticed it before?’ He put his arm on mine to prevent me from taking the buck into my pocket.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Read the Message!’

‘This note is a legal tender...,’ I read out, holding the greenback in my hands.

‘Not the message by the FED! Look for the other one on the other side,’ he suggested.

I flipped the bill over.

‘In God We Trust,’ I read out amazedly.

‘In whom else?’ he asked. ‘By the way, Carla’s just broken her pelvis,’ he mentioned, watching at the chaos in the middle of the junction. ‘You’ve seen her future. Seven months in a double hip spica cast. She’ll be tied to beds and wheelchairs.’

‘She’ll survive it. Gabriel, you know, I was in a full body cast, and I’m here. Sound and healthy. Not a big business,’ I understated my sufferings.

‘As you have seen it, she’s going to be confined in casts from feet to armpits,’ Gabriel reminded me. ‘She’ll be very helpless.’

‘Was it me who caused the accident?’ I overshot the indignation – but it was too late to redo.

‘No, not. But you exactly knew what would happen, and you could have prevented it. You are a difficult person, but you’re developing. But too slowly,’ he reassured me. ‘For the first time, you didn’t believe in the foresight. For the second time, you came here to watch the accident to see whether it would happen or not. And for the third time...’

‘Will be any third time?’ I asked.

‘Yes, there’ll be the third meeting. And I’m sure, you’ll do anything to save the patients-to-be after our next session,’ he announced. ‘As I can see, you aren’t too interested in taking part in this prevention business. Next time, I’ll show something shocking to motivate you.’

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 9)     Next (Part 11)-->

The Preventer, Part 9

Right after awakening from the freakish dream, it was hard for me to decide what was real and what wasn’t. A severe headache, which got up with me, too, was worse than a rampage of a group of wild Vikings berserking along the North Sea coast.

Rubbing my temples, I recalled the vision, which was too real and too confusing at the same time. I ran through the events once more. Oh, there had been a pretty nurse..., and I had been called doctor..., and yes, I had met a white-haired, white-bearded man named Gabriel, who had talked about weird things..., and there had been a female patient in the room. Though it would have been crucial, I had forgotten to read a file, which had been written about a girl to be saved.

If my memory serves me correctly, I had been designated as some Preventer or whatever, whose primary assignment was to save a woman from being put in casts... Oh, damn, what a foolish dream I had – I thought, while I was staggering to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror to see a stubbly face. Although my fractured bones had healed (more or less), all my wounds began aching again this morning. Maybe, a weather front was coming. Or something worse? It can be a hellish feeling when your entire internal framework starts throbbing, believe me. There had to be an evil dwarf tormentor hiding inside my bones, kept thrusting his spears to cut a way to outside.

Maybe, some medicines could ease the pain. I poured the pills out of the box, and the yellow capsules were already in my palm when I heard the doorbell ringing. Greeting the guest with some dirty words, I put the pills into my mouth. While chewing the medicine, I trudged to the antechamber to welcome the unexpected visitor.

I opened the door, and I saw a postman standing out there. The short man was stunningly familiar, having his white hair and white beard. Oh, my God, this was the man exactly coming from my dream! But Gabriel couldn’t be real. Hopefully, he was just a déjà vu, or an overflow from old memories. Or I knocked out my mind, having taken too much medicine in the bathroom.

‘Hello, Alex. I was told that you didn’t answer our call.’

‘What call?’ My lips were numb, I could hardly ask this question. What he told me didn’t help me to solve the riddle about the nature of his origin.

‘You haven’t done your job. You haven’t saved the woman.’

‘There is no job. There is no girl with casts. It was only a dream.’ I didn’t know why I tried to protect myself, however, I was too shocked to talk more.

To check his physical existence, I put my hand on his shoulder. Convincingly, I sensed the completeness and firm integrity of his bodily structure. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this being wasn’t made of air. Gabriel was genuine. Oh, sh*t, I met the vivified creature of my imagination. I went crazy.

‘Stop testing me. I’m real.’ Elegantly, Gabriel swept my hand off his shoulder.

In return, he placed his arm on my shoulder. This turn of probe ran differently. As if I had been a ghost, he was able to move his hand through my chest. I shivered, seeing his arm sank deep into my body.

‘Maybe, I’m more real than you are,’ he told me.

‘Oh, sh*t, Gabriel. Don’t do this again,’ I replied. With nervous movement, I hit my arms against my ribcage to check whether I was still made of blood and flesh. Unluckily, the punches hurt. ‘You’re talking in riddles. I haven’t got a PhD in Philosophy to unravel what you’re talking about.’

‘To be exact, you would need a PhD in Theology. Okay, I’ll speak more simply, descending to your low intellectual level. What you saw this night wasn’t a dream but a vision. A kind of message. You’re chosen to be the Preventer. If you can prevent seven accidents, you’ll be rewarded. Any question?’

‘Hell a lot!’

‘Please, avoid mentioning this word in my presence,’ he warned me.

‘Okay, I’ll watch my language. What is the reward?’

‘You can restart your life.’

I let out a loud laugh. Having lost so many things, and having spent so much time in hospital, I couldn’t decide if restarting my life would be a reward or a punishment for me. I didn’t want to re-experience anything bad. But there had been good things there, too... I should mention the pleasurably unforgettable hours when the talented Jennifer Bunny had cared for my plaster-rendered body.

‘If you can correct your mistakes, it’ll be a reward. If you fail to do so, it’ll be a terrible retribution for you,’ Gabriel said, reading my mind. ‘Come with me, I’ll show somebody to you.’

‘Whom?’ I asked since I wasn’t in a mood of leaving home.

‘You must face the consequence of your negligence.’

‘Must I?’ I grinned.

‘Last night, you took too many sedatives, you slept too long, and you missed the accident,’ he said, spotting a medicine box in my pocket. ‘You use too much of them nowadays.’

‘Even living my life is painful.’ I talked about the relit fire inside my bones.

‘All you need is just some fresh air. Take a walk with me.’

Though he wasn’t too convincing, I couldn’t resist an otherworldly power. I closed the door and began to follow Gabriel. We left the building. When we got to the street, he turned to the left. Strangely, strolling with him didn’t draw but recharged my biological batteries. I didn’t get tired at all. Almost leaving the district, we went along a couple of streets for some minutes. To stop our little trip, Gabriel halted and sat down on a wooden bench near a park.

‘Perfect! We’re in time,’ he checked his watch.

I didn’t know what to focus on. Leisurely, I was looking at the trees in the park behind us. Nature was awakening from a long winter, and the sleepy trees raised bunches of emerald green leaves.

‘Hey, stop counting the trees! We’re here because of her!’ He poked my shoulder.

I did a 180 to see the entrance of a hospital on the opposite side of the street. In this very minute, a young, brown-haired woman was leaving the building. However, she was too disabled to do it on her own. She was even too confined to hobble with a pair of crutches. Instead, she settled in a wheelchair, wearing two big casts. Behind her, a thirtysomething guy was manoeuvring her wheelchair down the slight slope of the ramp. He could be her husband or even an older brother. But his role didn’t matter, as he was just a minor character in the show, which was obviously starred by the cast-having female.

‘I introduce the unlucky girl whom you haven’t saved from the peril of casts,’ he noted to reproach me, posing as a proud director of a well-staged scene.

I eyed at the female sitting in the chair. She bent down her head to look the newly made medical confiners. And I could easily imagine why she did that. Feeling how restraining a cast could be, and experiencing the drug-repressed throbbing of the freshly broken bones... being in this condition was not funny.

The woman wore exactly the same type of casts as the ones she had sported in my vision. Made from red fibreglass tissues, a vast piece of shell fettered her damaged right leg, fully encasing the whole limb from thigh to toes. Unbent, the rigid dressings settled on the top of the well-stuffed plastic leg rest. Protecting the most injured parts, the solid bandages were unusually thick around the ankle, and they firmly wrapped the knees as well. Of course, the upper part of the LLC disappeared under the knee-length skirt she wore, however, I was sure that it was a full-sized leg cast.

Next, I spotted the reason why she was denied from using a pair of crutches: her right arm, too, was wounded, as well. A nicely shaped yet massive red-coloured long arm cast immobilised the smashed bones, stabilising her limb between the armpit and the wrist. In her lap, she gently cradled the weighty cast construction embracing her arm. The flexed cast rested in a neck sling, tightly attaching the injured limb to the chest. Although her fingers were free of cast, the digits just clang uselessly out of the opening of the stiff medical dressings, which incapacitated the elbow as well as the wrist joints.

Whatever happened to her, it did break not only her limbs but also it had sent her dreams to the garbage heap. She was just sitting in a collapsed pose in the wheelchair. She didn’t even speak to the guy helping her.

I checked her once again, watching her difficult struggle to transfer from the wheelchair into the backseat of the car, which was just a few steps away. Supported by her helper, she limped to the vehicle, however, she wasn’t able to use either the knee or the ankle in the firm bond of the restricting long leg cast, which didn’t stop dragging her back.

‘Melanie Wilson,’ Gabriel said.

‘That Melanie Wilson?’ I asked.

The name rang a bell in my head. As I wasn’t a big fan of sports, it took a while for me to recognise the Number One high-jumper.

‘You haven’t helped her. As a consequence, she has broken her right arm and right leg in an accident. She’ll be in casts for months. Unluckily for us, she’s going to miss the next Olympic Games.’

At last, I could grasp why she was full of sorrow. Melanie Wilson didn’t weep for the pain of the broken bones. She mourned the gold medal she would never win. Because of me.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 8)     Next (Part 10)-->

The Preventer, Part 8

Looking like 3D movies, the scenes were so lifelike that they were dreams beyond dreams. The things I experienced there stimulated all of my faculties of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. First, a twenty-something-year-old girl stepped out of the decreasing fog, dressed as a hospital nurse. After approaching me, she stopped in front of me to put a folder in my hands.

‘Doctor Robertson, here’s the medical case file you asked for.’

Hypnotised by her natural beauty, I thought that it was so wasteful for the apathetic world to employ this stunning female as a simple assistant. With her well-shaped face, with her shoulder-length blonde hair arranged in curls, and with the adorable contours of the long legs, she could easily be a world-conquering glamour model. The wonderful appearance filled all my senses, and I could hardly able to interpret what she said to me. But, finally, the meaning of the words, too, reached my ears.

Oh, wait! She called me a doctor. When did I become a doctor? I turned around. Getting confused, I found myself standing in a hospital room, wearing a light-blue gown of the senior medical staff. More shockingly, I noticed a wounded female patient lying in the bed there, rendered in several casts.

I hemmed. To know how things stand, I should ask the nurse, so I stopped looking at the patient. However, by the time I turned back to the nurse again, there was nobody beside me. The girl had disappeared, although I didn’t hear her receding steps or the noise of the closing door.

Hey, what weird kind of dream is it? Or did I overdose the medicines? Hey, I am not a doctor! But a broker. Or, at least, this was whom I used to be.

‘Don’t worry, this isn’t a drug delirium. And you aren’t a broker any longer,’ a new voice said from behind my back.

I shivered. I was sure that I was left alone in the room. (Of course, excluding the sleeping patient.) I turned to meet my new company, who a short old man with short white hair and a similarly shaved beard. His dress was a long-sleeved white pullover and a pair of white trousers. Distressingly too white.

The tranches of my thoughts span their wheels: I was supposed to be a doctor. A cool nurse vanished in the air. And there was this strange guy appearing in the room. I lost my mind - this was the conclusion at the end.

‘Don’t worry. You didn’t go crazy,’ he replied to my untold question.

‘Are you reading my mind?’ I asked amazedly.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s much better.’

I didn’t dare ask any more question. To escape from this embarrassing dream, I passed the mysterious figure and I began walking toward the door. Somehow I had to get out of this damn place. My hand was already on the door handle when the old guy alerted me.

‘What you’re doing is useless. There’s nothing there outside.’

‘What does “nothing” mean?’ My fingers froze on the latch, and I became too coward to open the door.

‘The true nothing. The endless emptiness. The virtual void.’

‘You’re kidding.’ My fist became pale as I grasped the handle so firmly.

I opened up the door. Indeed, it wasn’t the familiar sight of a frequented hospital corridor what received me there. I didn’t see any casted or bandaged patients planted into well-cushioned wheelchairs or hobbling with crutches. There were no doctors and nurses walking up and down there. Instead, there was... nothing. It was the deep space without stars. Its silky darkness was more horrible than the light-sucking singularity of the black holes.

‘The world outside doesn’t exist because it isn’t the part of the game,’ he said, teasing me for my disturbance.

There was no escape from here. Resigned, I turned my back to the darkness. With shaking hands, I closed the door and walked back to question him. I felt that my mind was pushed to the edge of normality.

‘The Game?’

‘Or should I say “test”? Or trial?’ His tone changed to serious.

‘Is it the hell?’ I asked, going closer to him. Maybe, I had to defeat this man to get to the next level of The Game.

‘No, this is not the inferno. This place is an imaginary hospital room made from your memories and fantasies. To be honest, I could find a lot of building materials in your head, since you’ve spent a long time in a real hospital after your accident, and you’ve seen a lot of medical drama TV series, too. You can easily imagine what a real hospital room can look like,’ he showed me around. ‘With a certain failure rate. It’s far from perfect, and some details are wrong or sketchy, and it all would make a real-world doctor laugh, however, it’s rather acceptable for me to use it as a background stage.’

‘An imaginary hospital room,’ I moved around to map the place under the new interpretation.

‘Yeah, absolutely. And to decorate it, I added an extra part to make you more comfortable. The chick was a product of your memory, too.’

‘The chick? Do you mean the nurse?’

‘Yeah. You saw her in the Bunny Magazine ten years ago. To be precise, it was the Volume XXIX, special winter edition, full page photo on page 47.’

That’s cool – I whistled. That’s why she was too beautiful to be a simple nurse.

‘And who are you?’ I asked.

‘Is it important? Am I your guardian angel? Or, perhaps, am I your suppressed unconscious? Your imaginary friend? A better part of you? An archetype of a wise advisor?’

Hearing the list of the metaphysical answers, I felt simpleminded.

‘Or, to be simpler, what if I’m only a necessary narrative device so that we avoid listening to your dull and long inner monologues all the time?’ he teased me to increase my confusion. ‘So, is it still important who I am? Call me Gabriel.’

‘Gabriel who?’

He just smiled. I didn’t know what to answer to this silence. But reading my mind, he continued.

‘Everything here is unreal, except for only one thing. Your cute nurse doesn’t exist. Neither does the room. Neither do I. Neither do you as Doctor Robertson. The only one thing that isn’t invented by your imagination is her,’ Gabriel pointed at the middle of the room.

Led by Gabriel, I went toward the bed. I found there a middle-height, brown-haired female in her early thirties. She was resting on the bed with closed eyes. Probably, she was sleeping. Sadly, her right leg was fully encased in a huge piece of red fibreglass long leg cast, which started at the base of the toes. Like a bulky coil, the firmly formed dressing encompassed the whole feet, captured the ankle, ran up along the shin to froze the knee, and it covered the thigh up to the hip. Blurring the fine contours of the broken limb, the heavy set of shell sank in the hill of soft pillows.

But the LLC wasn’t the only cast she sported. A large portion of solidified dressings enveloped her right arm, as well, and embraced each bit of the body member between the armpit and the palm. Being flexed at the elbow at a right angle, the L-shaped long arm cast was suspended in a cotton-padded sling, keeping the arm up in a firm hold in the air.

‘Who is she?’ I asked.

‘Everything is written in the file,’ Gabriel talked about the dossier, which the nurse had given to me. ‘It includes her name, her address, her injuries and even the report on the accident.’

‘Gabriel, I’m not a real doctor, I can’t treat her,’ I said, as I didn’t know what I could do for her.

‘Alex, I know you. Treating her fractures is definitively not your job.’

‘Thanks, however, I don’t need a female with casts.’ I looked at the patient. Although she wasn’t a first-class hottie, I could easily add her to the list of the potential girlfriends of mine, classifying her as a C Plus girl-next-door type. However, those two huge casts decreased my curiosity for her. ‘If you know me then you know that women with casts aren’t my business. I don’t want to make love with her.’

‘Alex, Alex, Alex,’ he rebuked me. ‘I must underline the fact that this is an innocent vision and not your sexual fantasy. Ahem, mostly. Except for the nurse, of course.’

‘I can’t cure her injuries. I can’t have sex with her, either. Why am I here, Gabriel?’

‘Why?’ he asked, repeating the first part of my question. ‘This is your first smart sentence today. You must save her. I called you here so that you can prevent her accident. What you see here is not her present time but her future.’

‘Why?’

‘To prove that you’re a good guy. You give your imagination as a background world, and I give you info about broken females to be saved. Try to do your best to help them. Congratulations on your new job, Mr Preventer.’

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 7)     Next (Part 9)-->

The Preventer, Part 7

As I had padded the way to the acquittal with banknotes, the trial was mere formality for me. However, following the rules, I attended the process.

Sadly for Mrs Velásquez, the uninvolved district attorney was the only one, who believed that it would be a fair procedure. I’ll never forget her astonished face expression when she kept watching me as my wheelchair rolled into the courtroom. Oh, she was falsely told that I was just one short step away from complete recovery. In contrast with the misinformation, I seemed to be a miserable wheelchair-bound patient, confined in casts, which were much bigger than anyone had seen before.

Even the unbribed members of the jury began feeling sorry for me. I was the poor guy, who had to wear a lot of large and heavy and restricting wrappings for more than half a year.

Since I had prevented Dr Rehnquist from cutting off the double hip spica cast, a nice piece of rigid dressings was built over my whole lower body, concealing the pelvis and disabling the legs. The casts of the lower limbs were smoothly attached to the DHS, and they were bent at the knees, settling fixed but comfortably on the rests of the wheelchair. I was sitting astride, with a bar to keep the legs apart, connecting the cast-frozen ankles. Just to have some privacy, a white blanket was put on the cast confinement of the middle parts.

Above this solid construction, a fittingly moulded body cast embraced my torso up to the neck, like a piece of unbending armour, making an overlapping shell integrated with the DHS.

According to Dr Rehnquist's advice, we hadn’t carried the set of casts to extremes, thus the Minerva cast hadn’t been rebuilt. Instead, a metal ring of a halo brace crowned my head, encircling it around the level of the forehead, with screws used as spacers spanning between the ring and the skull. From this iron band, several rods run down to find support at the base of a heavily padded vest, which was laid over the upper part of the body cast. Besides, to show the people how handicapped I was, I put my hands sporting dual short arm casts on display, placing them on the cushioned armrests.

All this configuration of casts and braces completely restricted my ability to move, and I was fixed in one unchangeable pose: to see only straight ahead. So, it was very difficult for me to follow the duel between the attorney and my lawyer, who kept walking up and down in the courtroom during the trial.

With full of confidence, I knew that I was mummy-wrapped sufficiently enough. Every time I looked at the confused district attorney, I was sure that I couldn’t lose this trial. Differing from the narrative she had built about me, I gave the impression of being an assistance-dependant patient and not that of an evil, drug-driven criminal.

Not knowing how to blame me, she wasn’t able to attack me any longer. My lawyer easily turned any of her accusations into insulting a poor, broken and suffering patient, whom I became after the accident.

The trial was an easy ride, taking much shorter time than I had expected. After a couple of days, I got a suspended sentence. According to the verdict, I had to pay a fine of one hundred thousand dollars. And I had to attend a drug rehab centre, also. And there were no words about prison sentence. Surely, I liked the judge’s decision very much.

The following day right after the trial, I was rolled back to the hospital, and Dr Rehnquist peeled the cast shell off my body. Suddenly, I become a free man. In every sense of the word. Legally, as I was free of any accusations and, medically, as I got rid of my casts. However, I wasn’t happy.

I had to find a new home. I had lost most of my wealth. I had spent a gigantic amount of money on bribes and hospital costs. I didn’t feel the rhythm of the Wall Streets anymore, and most of my clients had forsaken me. Only one or two million dollars left in off-shore accounts. And this balance was merely some pennies in this material world.

***

On some day, exhausted after a physiotherapy session, I was just resting on a couch in my newly-rented flat, looking blankly at the ceiling. I was thinking about how to restart the business when the ringing tone of the telephone disturbed this lamentation.

I hoped that, hearing about my return, one of my deserted clients wanted to come back to me. But it was about other business. The caller was my therapist Dr Rehnquist, who had treated my injuries after the horrible car crash. At first, of course, he asked me how I was, however, it was obvious that he would like to talk about something else.

‘Mr Robertson, we haven’t received your monthly donation for treating Ms Jane Doe,’ he told me.

‘I’m terribly sorry, but I’m not in the best financial situation.’

The trial was over. I didn’t need to keep the chick alive anymore. I decided not to pay tens of thousands for her useless treatment every month until the end of the world. It was time to terminate the Jane Doe project.

‘Oh, that’s clear. Maybe, we could wait for one or two months until you can settle your financial issues and, in the meanwhile, a charity foundation could temporarily finance...’

‘Sorry, Doctor, I won’t be able to support Ms Jane Doe any longer,’ I lied.

‘I’m shocked to hear it, Mr Robertson.’ The doctor’s tone changed, being really very moved. ‘I hope that you’re aware of the irreversible consequence of this decision.’

Warned, I fell silent for a while but I didn’t change my mind. I couldn’t imagine how easy it was to kill someone with three short words. Nine letters... Let her die.

‘When?’ I asked in short.

‘Next Wednesday,’ he replied and ended the call without saying goodbye.

How ironic! I took the life of my passenger twice. At first, when I hadn’t warned her to use the safety belt before the emergency braking. After falling out of my car, she had hit her head and had smashed her face, losing her inner personality and outer complexion to become a mindless shell. And now, I was ready to destroy all that left of her.

However, Ms Jane Doe was just an empty case, missing the spark of life. You can name it spirit, consciousness or mind or whatever, but none of them was in her head anymore. Did this supposition make my decision easier? I didn’t think so. Simply, I didn’t give a damn about the girl.

After the phone talk, I was exceptionally calm, and I fell asleep fast.

By the time when this round of troubles seemed to be over, something emerged inside me. I started to see visions. And these revelations changed everything. Seemingly, all parts of the world turned inside out. Next, I’ll talk about the dreams, which made me the Preventer.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 6)     Next (Part 8)-->

The Preventer, Part 6

As I told you, I spent a long time in hospital, and I slowly got accustomed to the satisfying yet restricting sensation of the shell, which kept its firm grip on my body parts. Though the separate casts of my torso and all the four limbs didn’t overlap each other any longer, I still felt like being a useless sculpture sitting on its cushion throne.

After getting to the next stage of mending, even the Risser cast had been altered to a simple body cast. Impatiently, I considered this body-fitting cast suit horribly big and confining, though I was happy to regain my neck from the occupation of an unbeatable superpower called plaster Risser. Yet, I couldn’t move my neck freely, as a soft brace encircled it to aftercare the injury. A pair of light fibreglass short arm casts had replaced the plaster LACs, capturing the entire forearms to bandage the parts between the elbow and the wrist. Solely, the double hip spica cast (and its tower over my loins) was the sole unchanged shell on me.

Well, I could fully hope that soon I could start the physiotherapy to regrow the strength, which I had lost during this immobilisation. The dull schedule made all my days boring, except for the happy hours I spent in the company of Jennifer Bunny. Impersonating a helpful relative, she paid a (paid) visit to me once or twice a week. My other regular visitor was Sister Mary Alice, however, talking to her wasn’t as funny as being with a hot Bunny Girl.

‘The family relationship between you and your cousin Jennifer must be exceptionally strong,’ Sister Mary Alice said to me one day. ‘She comes here to see you so often. And you lock the door when she is here.’

‘Oh, Sister. We need strict privacy because we are talking about serious business secrets. I need her to execute the stock exchange transactions on my accounts.’ I had this pre-cooked answer because I knew that the closed door would make people curious.

‘Isn’t she too young to run your business, Mr Robertson?’ The nun’s question was more innocent than it sounded.

‘She’s young, indeed, but she’s extraordinarily talented.’ My answer didn’t contain any untruth.

‘Talented? In which field of business? Are you talking about the Wall Street or the Bunny Club?’ she asked with an all-knowing tone.

‘Pardon?’ Her question seemingly unveiled the true story behind Jennifer’s camouflage. I got confused.

‘Don’t worry. You shouldn’t lie to me. I know who Jennifer is. I can recognise them.’

Luckily, the soft neck brace could prop up the jaw I dropped. How did a Catholic nun know call girls?

‘No, this isn’t what you think. Ms Jennifer isn’t a member of my family,’ she explained when she saw my reaction. ‘I’ve got a good nose to smell them out. You know, twenty years ago I myself was a Bunny Girl.’

Maybe I was wrong, but I heard a faint echo of proud in what Sister Mary Alice told me. Perhaps, she had regretted all the wrongdoing she had committed in the beds of the clients, however, she was still in the sin of vanity, being aware of her attractiveness. To wit, even without beauty products and botox treatment, she was still a fine-looking woman, so I could easily imagine how she could look like in her early twenties. Her self-revealing words destroyed the walls between us. And from then, I looked at her with a quite different eye. Oh, dear, she wasn’t spotless, either.

***

Generally, problems came and go. At that time, they mostly came and didn’t go away. Slowly, as my cast shell was reduced, not the bandages caused the main problem for me but the approaching trial did. As Sergeant Kellermann had said, I was charged with causing a traffic accident in which a person had been nearly killed. Since it would have been too absurd to sit in judgement over a person, who was stuck in a full body cast up to the fingertips, the justice court courteously waited for me to heal. So I got a couple of additional months to find out how I could escape from this.

For some obvious reasons, I didn’t want to go to prison. Who would? Okay, it had been overspeeding. But, please show me anybody who could stay within the speed limit. I had used drugs. So what? I’m sure you drink alcohol. I had almost killed a b*tch in the accident. Did it really count? She was just a whore or something like that. No matter. One more or one less call girl? There were millions of copies like her all around the world.

Not wanting to be in jail, I couldn’t leave anything to pure chance. Firstly, to show my goodwill, I rolled down my wheelchair to see the ‘dead’ girl in the coma care department every day. Moreover, every month I donated a huge amount of money to the hospital to finance the doctors to keep her alive. Next, I managed to find a damn good layer. A damn good but a damn expensive layer. However, I wanted to play safe. I bribed the judge as well as some of the jury members.

And thirdly, I wanted to look as miserable as I could. Though I liked my reduced casts and the improved mobility, yet I wanted to be wrapped in hell a lot of plaster cast while telling my heart-breaking confession in the courtroom. That would be impressive. And theatrical, indeed. But I always liked theatricality.

***


I moved my right hand confined in its SAC to put the Wall Street Journal down on the top of a small cabinet. Luckily, it was within my arm’s reach since stretching out my hand was the only movement that I was able to do, as my body was totally corsetted in cast.

‘Have you begun to read the book?’ Dr Rehnquist teased me about the Bible.

‘You know, I haven't got enough free time,’ I lied. Obviously.

‘Sister Mary Alice will be disappointed.’

‘This is her problem and not mine.’

‘Oh, really,’ he said. Then, after ticking off the necessary social chit-chat, he hopped to the main topic. ‘I’ve just assessed your newest X-rays, and I’ve got terribly good news for you.’

Because of my immobilised torso, my field of view was very restricted. Fortunately, Dr Rehnquist was standing inside it. I was shocked to spot a very dangerous weapon held in his hand. I supposed this thing could easily undermine the strategy of my legal defence. Fearing, I looked at his hand again. His weapon was a cast saw, indeed.

‘A very good news, really, Mr Robertson,’ he repeated. ‘I can remove your double hip spica cast, and soon you’ll be able to walk again. After so many months in cast protection, your broken pelvis has perfectly healed.’

‘Are you sure, doctor?’ I asked. I should have been glad. But I wasn’t. The doc was here to deliver me from casts, but I didn’t want to get out of them.

‘You don’t seem to be happy at all, Mr Robertson,’ he mentioned, trying to identify the emotion on my face.

Oh, doc, I was f*****g happy. In the courthouse, I would have like to be a poor devil, who had already paid a terrible price for his stupid mistake. And, as he had already paid the price, why should he be sent to prison? Simply, the more cast I would have the better my situation would be. And now, this clever doc came here to cut off a significant part of this wonderful wrapping. But instead of sharing my thoughts, I told him:

‘Dr Rehnquist, is it really necessary?’

At first, he was amazed, hearing my answer.

‘This is because of the trial?’ he saw right through me.

‘For sure,’ I replied honestly. ‘Believe me, this is an ice-cold and rational decision. I’m not a masochist or a cast-liker or whatever.’

‘I don’t suppose you to be a fetishist, Mr Robertson, however, this is a very unusual wish,’ he said, still grasping the cast saw. ‘All of the patients want to get rid of their cast as soon as possible.’

‘Doc, just give me one more month, please,’ I begged.

One month. Four weeks. Thirty days. How the hell would I word it for him so that he could understand it? I needed to have casts as large as possible during my trial. The doctor was still hesitating.

‘Would it impose any threat to my health if I would wear casts on healthy body parts for some additional weeks?’ I asked.

‘Ehhh, I don’t think so,’ he shook his head, but I bet that he didn’t know the exact answer.

‘So, what is the problem?’

‘The medical protocol. This is a medical institution, and not a plaza, where you can pick the product and service which one you want and which one you don’t. And unnecessarily wearing a cast is a fraud. Especially during a trial.’

‘You can rebreak my bones if you want,’ I bluffed. Wearing a double hip spica for seven months was more than enough. Okay, let’s restart everything if this is the price of my freedom.

‘Heaven forbid!’ Dr Rehnquist protested. Obviously, he had taken an oath to help people.

‘Doctor, please, understand me. Tell them that there are unforeseen complications, and you can’t remove any of my casts. And I’ll be grateful for you. Financially grateful.’

‘Anything else?’

‘My neck started to ache terribly.’ Overacting, I rubbed the soft neck brace, which enveloped it. ‘I think that I would need to get a halo brace for the next month.’

We exchanged knowing glances. Finally, he gave up and closed the medical case file containing my fresh X-rays.

‘Mr Robertson, I’ve got terribly bad news for you. Assessing your latest medical report, I’ve found some unforeseen complications, and I can’t remove your double hip spica cast. Besides, we must take a step back, and we replace the soft collar with a metal halo brace. And now, please, open your f*****g chequebook.’

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 5)     Next (Part 7)-->

The Preventer, Part 4

‘Dr Rehnquist, why haven’t you told me any words about the passenger?’ I attacked the doctor with my question as soon as he appeared in my room.

‘Sergeant Kellerman wanted to be the first, who would talk about her with you.’

I bit my lips - the smart cop would have liked to check my first reaction, maybe he had tried to trap me.

‘Oh, as I can see, the news about this woman makes you very upset,’ the doctor said.

‘I must see her.’ I had good reasons to answer it. Maybe, I would spend the rest of my life in prison because of her. Well, I was terribly sorry for... myself. If I could identify her, would it mean any benefit for me in court?

‘No, Mr Robertson, it’s too early for you to get up,’ he tried to keep me in bed. And it was an easy job since I couldn’t move on my own. My body posture was unchangeable, and the plaster moulded around me weighted tons.

Maybe, the doctor really feared for my health, or he could be worried about the integrity of my cast, thinking of the possibility of an accident during the excursion. The promised cast-reducing session hadn’t come yet, thus I was tightly enfolded in a contiguous piece of a cast complex, which consisted of a Minerva cast, two shoulder spica casts and double hip spica cast.

‘And you won’t recognise her,’ he revealed the second cause.

‘I must see her right now,’ I insisted on my wish.

‘The sight can be very upsetting for you,’ he experimented with finding other reasons.

‘If you don’t allow me to see her, you’ll be the one, who’ll make me rather upset, Dr R... Rrrr...,’ oh, sh*t, I forgot his name, again. Although a form-fitting cast enclosed my skull, my mind was like a leaky bucket letting words flow out of my head.

‘Rehnquist,’ he helped me courteously. ‘You would need a lot of rest, Mr Robertson. And there is no chance that you can recognise Miss Jane Doe as her head is fully swaddled.’

‘Do you know who she is?’ I turned very happy. Jane. What a nice name. But the doctor’s reply broke down the freshly-born contentment.

‘No, unfortunately not. Each unidentified female is called Jane Doe,’ he said. ‘Did you forget this policy, too?’

However, the stand I took was as firm as the plaster bandages confining me. Finally, he gave up his resistance, and he called four orderlies into the room. Soon eight strong arms grabbed my cast-encased arms and legs. Carefully, they weight-lifted my heavy shell up from the bed to plant it into a special wheelchair. For the first time after five months, I was prepared to leave this homey chamber. Well, I was successfully transferred to the chair, and I began my journey toward the room of the unknown girl, who stayed in the coma care department in the most distant wing of the facility. Unluckily, I was unable to roll or control my vehicle, as my arms were kept fixed in immense shoulder spica casts. To help me out, one of the nurses became a living engine.

After a lift ride, we got to a crowded corridor. Slowly passing by the people, who parted to give us way, I sensed as dozens of eyes were glued at me, full of curiosity and pity. Understandably, a patient wrapped in casts from top to down was a freaky sight.

By the way, how much stock of casts would a hospital need? This could be a good commodity market opportunity! When getting back to the stock exchange, I would surely buy the shares of cast producing companies, or I would start trading with plaster of Paris.

‘We’ve arrived, Mr Robertson.’

The nurse’s words pulled me back here from the trading floor. She stopped rolling the wheelchair to open the door of a hospital room. Smartly, she adjusted the inclination angle of the backrest to change the pose of my rigid upper body in order that I could see the patient there.

As I was told, my passenger was in a wretched state. Her soul and mind were wandering on better fields, leaving her wounded body to us. Like a motionless puppet, the girl was lying on the bed, unconsciously, kept alive by machines, which were all arranged around the bed. An oxygen mask kept pumping air into her lungs, inflating and deflating her chest slowly. In the quietness, the only noise was the periodical hiss of the ventilation machine. Her lifeless life seemed so artificial. With its magic toolbox, the medical science tricked the death this time.

Though a blanket covered the body up to the chest, her torso and legs looked healthy and uninjured. The arms, limply resting on pillows, were brought tightly flat to the sides. Unlike the sound body and limbs, the condition of the head and the face was horribly different. From forehead to neck, white layers of overlapping bandages bound each part of the face. Above the mask-like soft medical dressings, an elaborated head brace encircled the head and captured the neck. Surrounding her wrapped temple, its upper part was a metal ring similar to a black halo, from which several horizontal rods ran down to connect it to a cotton-padded vest laid over her chest.

In spite of looking at the chick, I couldn’t recall how I had met her, and what I had done with her. Or, rather, the answer for the latter issue was obvious.

‘Do you know who she is?’ Dr Rehnquist appeared in the room to ask this question.

I didn’t see him since he was well beyond my cast-limited tiny horizon, however, I could recognise his voice.

‘No memories, sorry,’ I said.

Maybe, it was utterly useless for me to come here. Her face remained hidden below the overdone gauze-wrappings. I had seen one million black-haired chicks in my life before, and she was merely one of them.

‘Mr Robertson, I think it’s the highest time to go back to your room,’ the doc put his hand on my cast-encased shoulder. Obeying, the nurse turned my wheelchair around to roll me out of the female’s room.

Who could she be? A party b*tch? An escort girl? A luxury prostitute? These questions filled my mind. Oh, gosh, I had almost killed her, and I didn’t know anything about her. I couldn’t recall her face. I didn’t know even her name, either. What kind of man am I?

***

Soon, both me and my medical sarcophagus were put back into the pillow nest of my bed, so I had a lot of time to think about the events. After several hard tries, I managed to press some memories out of my mind. And I saw her, too. Of course, at first, the usual afterimage arrived. I had been in my Porsche 911 cabriolet, rushing along the motorway. I had pushed the gas pedal down to the floor, then I had looked at the speedometer. The sports car had been almost flying, being faster than one hundred and twenty miles per hour. Driven by drugs, I kept accelerating.

And suddenly, I dug up a new piece of memory. While driving, I had turned my head to the right to see her. She had been sitting on the passenger seat, apparently enjoying the drive. I bet that she had liked the expensive car or my endless budget. A fast girl in a fast car. As I had told you.

However, I wasn’t able to recall her face as if a cloud had blurred it. She had been talking, but I couldn’t hear her. I had enjoyed the silent film, which she had starred until she had unfastened the safety belt. The chick had gotten up to come toward me to kiss me. I had told something to her, having her change her mind. After that, she had stood up in the seat, and, with a crazy idea, she had attempted to re-enact Rose’s scene from the Titanic.

‘I'm flying!’ She had cried out, after she had extended out her arms, making a cruciform. Her hair and lose dress adorably waved in the wind.

But doing so had been a fatal mistake. My mind had been slowed down by drugs, so, by the time I had noticed the overspeeding semi-trailer truck on the oncoming lane, it had been too late. I had stepped hard on the brake to miss the accident when something hardly believable had happened.

‘I am flying!’

This had been her three words that I could listen to. Then she had simply disappeared from my car.

Generally, an emergency braking at 150 mph isn’t a good idea. But being unfastened in a speeding sports car is a more stupid one, for sure. For a hundredth of a second, I had seen her flying in the air, and landing on the hard asphalt, smashing her face and breaking her neck. However, my destiny had come, too, as the cargo trailer had fallen out of balance and turned over to flatten my car.

Looking at the head-to-feet cast, which enveloped ninety percent of my body, I felt a bit luckier than the girl.

I didn’t feel any sorry for her. How could my heart bleed for an unknown c*nt, who wanted to be in an expensive car and to spend a night with a rich guy? Considering the facts, she wasn’t a human being anymore but she had turned into merely one hundred pounds of flesh kept alive by machines. Sounds terrible? Yes, this was my style in those dark days.

However, I didn’t want her to die. I needed her because of my selfish goals. If she wouldn’t survive until the end of my trial, I would get a very long prison sentence.

Carried away by my thought, I didn’t notice somebody entering the room. Though I could hear the steps, my head remained frozen in the cast capsule, and I couldn’t check the visitor. Soon, a lady appeared in my restricted world, wearing a kind of black dress, which was typical of the ones having a special calling.

‘Good morning, Mr Robertson,’ she said. ‘I’m Sister Mary Alice. I’m here to console the ones, who suffer.’

He looked at me. Maybe, she had seen a lot of people with casts, but my shell was incomparably great. A nicely-shaped firm sphere capped my head and surrounded my face, too. Then, she checked the tight cast neckband. The cast, which rigidly embraced my torso was like an unwearable suit fashioned by an evil tailor. She watched at my arms, which were disabled in two identical shoulder spica casts. Luckily, all the other cast, like the double hip spica cast, and my casted loins were hidden below a blanket.

‘You’ve suffered a lot,’ she drew the simple conclusion.

‘Yeah, hellishly lot.’

‘You shouldn’t talk like this,’ she warned me nicely.

‘Religion isn’t my concern,’ I replied honestly.

‘Yet, you are the concern of God. Don’t worry, Mr Robertson, I don’t want to convert you. Instead, simply consider me to be your daily talk partner. It seems you’ve lost something.’

Oh, what a clever woman! I’ve lost five months from my life. I’ve lost my health. I’ve lost almost all my clients and sacks of money. I’ve lost my house and my car. That’s all. - I didn’t reply, so she went on talking.

‘I suppose that you’ve got a lot of free time,’ she said, flashing a new glance at the stiff shell, which successfully safeguarded me even from the slightest squirm.

‘Most likely,’ I agreed.

‘Excellent! Then I’ve got something to talk about.’ Sister Mary Alice got up, and cheerfully put a thick, black thing on the cabinet next to my bed. Of course, it was the Book.

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 3)     Next (Part 5)-->

The Preventer, Part 3

It was so hard to digest what Dr Rehnquist had told me. However, even this full body cast disaster had its unseen benefit. For example, I could get out of the squirrel cage of moneymaking for a while. Surely, I hadn’t waited for a holiday like this, but even this idling was better than nothing. And, importantly, while I had been in coma, I had simply slept over the worst withdrawal symptoms of drugs. Though I was completely cast-confined, I wasn’t paralysed, and I wouldn’t be a doll in a wheelchair, either. I had a big chance to recover, and sooner or later Dr Rehnquist would come back with his magical can-opener to free me from this cast prison.

Yet... holy sh*t - I murmured. My body had been smashed in a terrible accident. I had been unconscious for months. I was cocooned in a hard shell, which extended from head to feet, and I would be chained to this bed and locked down in this hospital for some more long and boring months. That’s what my fellow brokers would call a bear market. A polar bear market. From an almighty businessman, I had turned into a miserable patient, a living sculpture. Of course, I couldn’t complain too much, as the treatment was first-class and the medical service was excellent. All members of the staff were friendly to me.

The heavy bandages made my arms and legs totally useless, keeping them in their unchangeable positions. As if I had been tetraplegic, I had to be served in 24/7. Since I couldn’t help myself with my arms firmly fixed in shoulder-to-wrist casts, I needed the assistance of the nurses when I ate and drank. Well, I was fed like a giant baby. The process of the feeding followed a strange ritual: after finding a place on the bedside, the caregiver put a bib over my cast-wrapped neck, so that the food couldn’t spoil the clean plaster bandage, which snugly captured my torso. After the precautions, she dumped a spoonful food into my mouth, which I was hardly able to open up since I could hardly move my jaw in the narrow face window wedged in the tight Minerva cast.

But beyond the eating, I got something else, too. As I had wished, every day a nurse came into my room to read out the most important financial news for me. Listening to the news, I quickly realised that not my health state had gone south but also my financial balance had turned in the red. While I had been knocked out, my accounts had remained unmanaged for months so I couldn’t terminate the unprofitable market positions, which I had opened before my accident.

I had to stay in the body-hugging and stiff wrappings, riding a hospital bed, and the insider information sources weren’t available for me any longer. I had lost not only some million dollars but also most of my clients had left me. Really, would you trust a mummy-like financial advisor, who fought with memory loss? The more time I spent in hospital, the bigger financial trouble I was in. Nice trap, and I wasn’t able to solve it.

Somehow, I felt that I had to get out of here. Even if I would be a cast-sculpture nailed down to a wheelchair, I would have liked to go home, and I would have to meet my business partners to rebuild the lost empire. On a day, I mentioned my ideas that I wanted to be home-nursed. However, Dr Rehnquist didn’t like this plan. He reminded me that my injuries needed a permanent special medical attention. And he told me, to ruin my dreams, that there was no place like home any more. In the sense of that, my house had been robbed and burnt down while I had slept in coma.

Though it was a terrible piece of news, it wasn’t the one that pushed me down to the lowest. Soon, I took part in a discussion, which would become one of the turning points that changed the course of my life.

As I told you, my days were rather dull and boring, as I experienced the repetition of the same daily schedule again and again. Except for the medical staff, I didn’t see anybody from the outer world, because I had no friends but financial connections only. I had no girlfriend but merely fast and short-lived relations. Yet, in the second week, a guest came into my room and sat on a chair next to my bed.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Robertson,’ he greeted me.

Although he didn’t want to study my super-sized casts noticeably, he couldn’t do anything to stop watching it. Well, the dimension of my integument was outstanding, indeed. Layers of solidified bandages encircled most part of my head and ran over the top part of it to create a white helmet of plaster. My small face window was surrounded in thick gauzes, too.

My neck and body were in the firm hold of the tailor-made body cast, which garbed my body, depriving me of any chance of motion. Expanding between the armpit and the wrist, a pair of look-alike shoulder spica casts swaddled the two arms, holding them in a stiff pose in the air at shoulder level. And the poor lower limbs were prisoners of an all-encompassing massive double hip spica cast, which captured everything down there except for my toes. I was surely a miserable sight.

The guy just kept measuring the rare sight of a fully casted patient. He was just sitting on the edge of my narrow field of view. He looked experienced, being fortysomething. Seemingly, he didn’t feel any sorry for me. For him, I was a broken broker captured in his cocoon. He got what he deserved – he could think it about me.

‘Sergeant Kellerman,’ he told his name finally. To prove to be Sergeant Kellerman, he showed me his badge. ‘I hope that I don’t disturb you.’

‘No, you can’t disturb me. Nowadays, my calendar is rather empty,’ I said. Indeed, instead of cool and young secretaries, nowadays middle-aged nurses swarmed around me.

‘That’s good. Can we talk about your accident?’

‘Some kind of interrogation?’

‘We’ve got a lot of open questions to be answered, Mr Robertson,’ he said calmly. ‘Can you remember what happened to you?’

‘I was just driving along the highway when that cargo trailer hit my car and sent me to this full body cast,’ I lied, not wanting to blame myself. Though, it wasn’t a lie. It was just one-half of the facts.

‘Anything more?’

‘Nothing more,’ I assured him.

‘This is a photo. Please, try to refresh your memory, Mr Robertson,’ Mr Kellerman said.

He opened a folder held in his hand and took a picture in front of my eyes. The image depicted my car, taken right after the accident. Being so flat, my Porsche looked like a compressed pancake. I couldn’t imagine how I could survive the crash. Of course, I remembered everything. The speedometer showing 150 mph. The euphoria due to drugs. However, I would be crazy, if I would confess anything.

‘Any new memories?’

I tried to shake my head. The old habit didn’t work because of the Minerva cast, which embedded my head and completely captured the neck.

‘Sorry, nothing.’ Instead of the failed body language, I chose the oral way of communication.

‘Yeah, Dr Rehnquist warned me of your memory problems,’ he sighed. ‘Maybe, all that I’m doing is useless... But, let’s have a new try.’

Having said it, he gave me a second photo, which was taken of a woman. The picture had excellent quality, yet I sensed that it was a bit unsettling. She had black hair. That was okay. But her face and appearance were so... flawless and too perfect. It looked like an over-filtered and uber-photoshopped image about a fashion model, who wore several layers of makeup. Made so featureless, this female could be in any age between 18 and 48.

‘Sorry, nothing,’ I replied, as it didn’t evoke any memories. And this time I wasn’t lying. I had never ever seen this girl in my life. ‘Sergeant, she looks so... unnatural? Like a female character from a computer game?’ I guessed out suddenly what disturbed me so much.

‘You’re right, Mr Robertson,’ the sergeant assured me. ‘This is really a CGI. Unluckily, we’ve got only a reconstruction about her.’

‘A reconstruction? What does it mean exactly?’

‘Do you recognise her?’ he asked me again.

‘Recognise who? A character of a video game? Are you kidding?’ I asked, getting confused.

‘No, this case is deadly serious, Mr Robertson. This female was your passenger.’

‘My passenger?’ I didn’t know what he was talking about. I couldn’t recall any girl with me in the car. ‘There wasn’t any passenger.’

He looked into my eyes, where he couldn’t find the sparks of remembrance. I swear that I told him the truth. Or rather, what I believed to be true.

‘Did you really forget it? But you had a passenger, without a doubt, Mr Robertson. Falling out of your car, she smashed her face and broke her neck. We are unable to identify her for five months.’

Oh, my gosh. I had picked up a party b*tch, and I had totally forgotten her.

‘How is she?’ My curiosity was honest.

Again, the policeman looked at my casts to assess them.

‘Despite your full body cast, her situation is more miserable than yours. She’s still in coma. Full body paralysis. Kept alive by machines. And her facial injuries are inoperable. A team of doctors and computer image experts worked hard to create this picture on her.’

His words were like a sledgehammer hitting my head. I had had a passenger. She was in coma. Her state was hopeless. She had no face. Nobody knew her name. Nobody, including me. Finally, I understood what I did on that day, almost half a year ago. I hadn’t been alone. She had almost died in the accident. Maybe, her present state was worse than any death.

Yet, the cop could crank up the situation.

‘Mr Robertson, the surgeons found traces of drugs in your blood when they prepared you for the operations after you were checked into hospital. You significantly exceeded the speed limit. You caused serious wounds to a young lady. All of this must have serious consequences. When you leave this hospital, you’ll be put on trial.’

to be continued

<--Previous (Part 2)     Next (Part 4)-->

‘Could you remove my handcuff, please?’ With this politely worded question, I tried to show my nicest and most harmless part to the female interrogator. ‘I’m not dangerous.’

‘Thank you for your kind guidance, Mr Robertson. However, in our fine-tuned legal system, it’s my privilege to decide whether you are dangerous.’ Though it was a refined answer of a good wordsmith, Annie wasn’t a kind of cop who could be tamed easily.

The detective flashed a bored glance at my tied hands, which were resting on the desk of the interrogation room. With an impassive expression, Annie was just leaning against the wall opposite, kept watching at me. She didn’t wear a uniform, but she was dressed in a worn pair of blue jeans and dark blue pullover, perfectly suiting her dark hair. The long and loose sweater hid not only her breasts but the holster, too, which was attached to the belt.

The God must have been in a pleased and generous mood when He had created Annie, giving her every imaginable attractive feature to make her a beautiful woman. Yet, no one could be perfect in this world. Neither was she.

Her weakness was her personality, which was as strange as her name. That is to say, Annie wasn’t really called Annie. Born into a family coming from Iceland, her official name was Arngunnur Jóhanna Hallmundsdóttir. But, unluckily for everyone, in this country, just a few people could memorise or spell such a complicated name. Yet, successfully coping with all the troubles it made, Hallmund’s daughter Arngunnur Jóhanna had never had the slightest intention to change her name. However, making some concession, she generously tolerated her closest friends calling her Annie.

Having a cute name like this, Annie could have been a lovely fairy living in the pages of a fantasy novel. Instead, she had chosen a different career. She had become a cop. A damn good one, who had been able to arrest me.

Oh, I talked about Annie’s name so much that I almost forgot to tell you what her glitch was. Forgive me, my memory didn’t work as fine as it used to do after I had hit my head in the car accident.

So, some words about Annie’s personality. Well, the Almighty had been too busy with building her flawless shell of a woman, and He had simply missed pouring any emotions into her. So, because she lived and worked in her cold and feelingless manner all the time, she was dubbed ‘Ice Queen’ behind her back. What is more, Annie was supposed to be the first android, whom the local police department employed to catch criminals like me.

Nevertheless, Annie was unquestionably a living human being like any of us. She was terribly fragile and vulnerable, as I realised a couple of hours later when I saw her again with her casts. But now, ‘Ice Queen’ Annie was still not plastered while she was here in the interrogation room to talk with me.

‘You’ve stalked and harassed several women, Mr Robertson,’ she told me. To sign that the official proceeding took a serious turn, she stopped chewing gum, which she spat into a dustbin. Oh, she could aim very well. ‘You didn’t stop following and bothering them. The list of accusations is almost endless.’

‘I’m not a criminal, Annie,’ I said.

‘Only my friends can call me Annie. For you, I am Detective Arngunnur Jóhanna Hallmundsdóttir.’ Her words were as cold as the north wind coming from the Arctic. ‘Where is your lawyer, Mr Robertson?’

‘I’m innocent. I need no lawyer,’ I stated.

‘That’s good,’ she told me. ‘Sir, you have the right to remain silent when questioned...’

‘It’s unnecessary, Detective Hallmundsdóttir. I know the warning...,’ I tried to note, uselessly.

‘...anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney...,‘ Annie kept citing all that the law required. She imitated a smile and waved for the camera mounted on the top of the corner. Although she missed all kind of emotions, she could pretend them very well. Mostly. Right now, she was playing the good cop for the record. ‘...Do you understand it?’

‘I do,’ I confirmed, following the rites of the obscure religion called Jurisdiction.

‘Please state your name for the record.’ Hearing her detached voice, I guessed whether warm blood or icy water circulated in her body.

‘Alexander Robertson,’ I said.

‘As I told you, you’re accused of stalking and harassment, Mr Robertson.’

‘This is only a misunderstanding. I really followed several females, and I sent them e-mails, and I called them on the phone. However, I’ve got a good reason to do so,’ I confessed.

‘What is your wonder reason?’ she asked.

‘I wanted to save them.’

‘Save them? From whom? From yourself?’

‘Don’t joke, Detective. It’s very serious.’

‘Indeed, this is serious. Could you tell me why you did what you did?’

‘Please, sit down. This confession will take a while,’ I suggested. ‘I can tell you everything from the very beginning. Do you know the first parts of the Bible?’

‘The story about Adam and Eve and the serpent and the apple?’

‘No, something from a bit earlier.’

‘Mr Robertson, I’m interested only in the last months of your life. Would you mind jumping over the first ten thousand years?’

‘Detective, not a long time ago I had a lot of time to pass in a hospital. Among other things, I read the Bible. On the very first page, there are some words, which were very typical of my miserable situation. This is where the story of stories begins... in darkness.’

***

Also, my personal story began in darkness. You can understand it in a metaphorical sense, too, as I was a villain. But not a wanted criminal. I always kept the law, and no finance authority could catch me. I belonged to the privileged caste of rich guys in expensive suits. Being a broker in the stock exchange was better than winning the lottery. It didn’t really matter whether a bull or a bear ruled the market, or whether I provided a big profit or a huge loss for my clients. Because of the high transaction fees, which I charged to them, I always had a hell a lot of money to waste, and I could easily find a b*tch to f*ck every time.

Fast food, fast cars, fast girls, fast drugs. Everything was fast. So was my accident.

My black Porsche 911 cabriolet rushed along the asphalt of the motorway. I excitedly looked at the speedometer. The sports car was almost flying. I was driving faster than one hundred and twenty miles per hour. Right now, I don’t know exactly what in my blood was. Drugs? Alcohol? Or a mixture of them was fuelling me? Crazily, I kept stepping on the gas. The hand of the analogue speedometer jumped up to one hundred and fifty mph.

I would lie if I told you that the accident wasn’t my fault. But it was. At least, to a certain extent. Undeniably, I was overspeeding. However, so that I could defend myself, I had to talk about the semi-trailer truck, as well, which was coming in the oncoming lane too fast, defying the strong crosswind. And it happened. Suddenly, a powerful push of the side-wind kicked the cargo unit out of balance. The truck driver couldn’t do anything to stop the large trailer from flipping over. It all collapsed on the road to block my lane, and to smash my sports car...

...and there came darkness. This was my last memory for some time. Or, for a long time. I can’t tell you anything more about my accident. Luckily. As it would be excruciating and disturbing even for me.

And after the figurative darkness of my lifestyle, I experienced the real darkness. My mind was in the outer space, million light years away from any galaxies, cast away from everything.

In the beginning was the Word... and I heard it. My Word was Miranda, who was calling my name. And at those dark times, I didn’t know who Miranda was. Or who I was. I tried to open my eyes but I wasn’t in charge of my own body. When I struggled to move, horrible waves of pain flood over my nerves. As if I had been hermetically wrapped up, I was kept rigid, and I didn’t know if I would have liked to do anything at all. My first attempt to wake up failed. Slowly, I slid back to the silky syrup of blackness surrounding and caressing me.

Later the doctors told me that I had been dead for some minutes. However, these dreams about space weren’t a near-death experience, but probably they were the most awake stages of my coma.

Unexpectedly, my eternal night was over. I was still thrown out in the space when a spaceship came, and it aimed its gigawatt laser gun at me. I swam in the bright beam, which started to scorch my optic nerves. It was so painful like a pin pushed deep in the eyeball. I fought hard, yelling at them to stop, when...

...my eyelids moved up. Somebody touched my face. Fingers grabbed and pulled up my right eyelid. Then a lamp appeared above my head to shine a blinding light directly into my eyes to check the pupillary reflex. All I could do was blinking.

‘Oh,’ an amazed female voice said, seeing my involuntary grimace. ‘Wait a minute. I’ll call the doctor here.’

Though my eyes remained open, I couldn’t see anything. The world was blurred dashes of colour. I heard knocking of steps on the floor, going away. I tried to get up, but my body didn’t follow the commands of my mind.

Noise of steps again. Coming back. This time, two pairs of shoes. My sight was still unclear, and I couldn’t see the face-like indistinct shapes as if a curtain of fog had been between us.

‘Good morning, I am Dr Rehnquist,’ the blur told me, well articulating. ‘We are so glad to see that you woke up. Can you tell me your name?’

The rusty cogwheels in my head creakingly started to process the words; meanwhile, I could understand that he wanted to test me. If I had any serious head injury, it wouldn’t have any sense for them to talk to a brainless body. I had to prove to him that I returned, and I was mentally alive.

‘Alex... ander.’ The word broke apart as I told it to him with my dry mouth, which had been unused for a long while.

‘And your family name, please?’

Oh, sh*t! Do I have a last name, too? What can it be? Something beginning with R...? Maybe Rehnquist? No, no, no..., don’t be so stupid. It was the doctor’s name.

‘R... Robertson.’

‘And how are you, Mr Robertson?’

‘No clue, Doc.’ To be frank, everything was out of order.

‘It’s no wonder, Sir. You’ve survived a terrible accident. You’ve just returned from a long coma, and right now you’re in a full body cast.’

to be continued

<--Would you like to read an other story?    Next (Part 2)-->

The Curse of Friday the 13th
Day 3
Part 12
Friday the 13th, 11:31 p.m.

Still musing on the sight of the poor, mummy-wrapped Julie, Father Andrew stepped out to the corridor from the hospital room. He was so profoundly affected that he almost blindly bumped into Mike, who had just arrived to see his wife. Meeting Mr Warden, the priest felt it right to say some words to prepare the worrying husband for the scene waiting for him in the room.

‘We feared the worst when we heard that you didn’t get to the Monastery. We’ve called all the local hospitals to find you, Mr Warden.’

Wanting to see Julie so much, Mike wasn’t in the best mood to talk to the priest. So, his reply was nothing else but an impolite humming. However, Father Andrew went on talking, and he introduced his companion.

‘Mr Warden, please meet Reverend Mother Bernadette of the St. Mary’s Monastery. She came with me to see your wife.’

As if she had been called, the nun just left Julie’s room. Meeting the two men on the corridor, she stopped, forgetting her tiny hand on the doorknob.

Hearing the female’s rotund title, and seeing the old-styled black clothes, which fully dressed her figure, and the white coif hiding her hair, Mike expected to meet a wrinkly lady, who would be as old as Father Andrew. Instead, the holy sister, who presented a cordial smile to Mike, was surprisingly young, being just a bit older than his loved Julie.

‘I’ve never ever seen such obvious signs of a diabolic intervention, although I’ve got missional experience in the most challenging places in the earth, Mr Warden.’ The nun’s voice was as energetic and determined as its owner. ‘Unluckily for you, this time the devil was faster and cleverer than us. Today the dark forces broke her bones, but with the help of God, she’ll get well soon. Please, promise me that you and your wife came to our place next time! Our monastery can always provide shelter for you.’

Mike didn’t know what to reply for the kind invitation. The fourth Friday the 13th seemed far away, and Julie had just been wrapped up in her third full body cast. Perplexed, he muttered something that the nun meant ‘oh, yes, of course’.

‘We’ll pray for her!’ Father Andrew added, seeing that Mike was eager for being with his wife. After saying goodbye, the priest and the nun walked away.

After shaking them off, Mike remained alone on the quiet corridor of the intensive care unit. Not knowing the right room number, he chose the room to the right, because it was the one, which Father Andrews and Sister Bernadette had been to, before they talked tender-heartedly about the mummy-like Julie.

Indeed, Mike found Julie fully covered in white after he entered the room. It was so heartbreaking to see his wife in full body cast. The sight of the bandage-bound figure on the bed was horribly familiar yet unsettling even for the third time.

Resting on a low pile of cushions, Julie’s whole head was planted in a Minerva cast. Completely concealed, the solid bandages blurred all the cute shapes of her face, leaving just a couple of tiny dark spots bored for the nostrils and the mouth. Arms and legs were wrapped in four thick spica casts expanding from the body cast. Criss-crossing in the air, there were several supporting and spreading bars wedged between the torso and the limbs to maintain the body parts in the needed position, and to keep the impossible cast configuration together.

Mike slid down to a chair. Looking at the shell closely, he could tell the difference between her FBCs. Julie’s latest injuries, which she had suffered during the lift cabin fall, must have been exceptionally serious, he supposed. This newly made full body cast was noticeably more extensive than any of the two previous integuments. Now, she was wrapped in a bulky piece of armour, changing her figure into something rough and big. Or, maybe, she could be so shattered that the surgeons had used additional layers of cast to protect her fragmented bones. However, without the experience in the field of surgery, Mike couldn’t guess how thick a two or a three-layered full body cast could be.

Moved by the misery of his unlucky wife, Mike kept just sitting by her bed. Tearing, he extended his arm to caress Julie’s cast-wrapped hand, which expanded up in the air in the frozen posture. Slowly, his fingers touched the solid cast surface, and, to show his affection, he bent forward to put a kiss on the sweet hand, which was overly swaddled in multi-layered bandages.

But just before his lips could meet the rude outermost layer of the arm cast, Mike heard a voice coming from behind his back.

‘Hey, mister! What are you doing here?’

Shivered by the unfriendly tone of the question, he turned around to see a nurse, who just entered the room. Recognising the visitor, the nurse got amazed, and she kept gazing at Mike, who was tenderly holding the patient’s cast-covered hand in his hands.

‘Mr Warden?’ she asked once again, getting more confused than before.

‘I’m just here to see my wife,’ Mike answered. Noticing strange sparks in the eyes of the nurse, he worked out that something was terribly wrong there.

‘Uh-huh, your wife?’ the nurse asked, and she deeply inhaled, too, to gain time. Fighting herself, she pressed her lips tight to prevent a loud laughter. ‘Your wife? I am afraid that this is not your wife.’

Hearing that, Mike pulled his arms far back from the medical mummy, which didn’t contain the shattered body of Julie.

‘Not my wife?’

‘She’s in the room opposite. And to be frank, you were not the first one, who chose the wrong door today.’

Outwitting the forced seriousness, a weird smile surfaced on the nurse’s face, but it quickly faded away. Alarmed by the mentioned mistake, Mike guessed that even Father Andrew and Sister Bernadette had visited this patient, mistaking this mummy for Julie.

‘Surely, treating two patients in full body cast at the same time can be very confusing,’ the nurse sighed, telling how hard this job could be. ‘This patient is Detective White. He was taken here in the morning. So, it’s the highest time to tell who is who.’

Having stepped to the bed, the nurse installed a nameplate on the front frame. Besides, she placed a framed photo on a small cabinet, depicting a serious cop wearing his uniform. Clearly, the Nilrems had got rid of the detective, who hadn’t stopped investigating their dark business.

‘Oh, I’m sorry...,’ Mike said, getting flushed.

With hesitant steps, he receded from the bed. Feeling that he made a fool of himself, he left the room, trying not to look either at the nurse or at the male mummy. As soon as Mike went out, the nurse lost control, and she went into a spasm of laughter, that was so loud that even Mike could hear it on the corridor.

To find Julie at last, Mike chose the door opposite, and he went into the other hospital room. This time, he carefully checked the medical ID put on the wall. In this case, the body-shaped sarcophagus was surely the one, which enveloped Julie. Moreover, he found a photo there, put on display on the cabinet, depicting a stunningly beautiful girl from the golden age of the pre-full-body-cast times.

The unstoppable Curse of the Friday 13th had managed to reach its terrible goal for the third time. It had put Julie into a full-full body cast, depriving her of all the human abilities to move, to communicate and to sense. The configuration of the rigid shell, which firmly swaddled his wife, was similar to the one built for Mr White, except for the fact that it was noticeably smaller. Being tightly compact, the hard bandages covered everything, and they closely followed the outlines, the shapes and the curves of the feminine body.

Because of her numberless fractures, Julie was deeply embedded in the one-piece exoskeleton expanding from top to down, literally. There were only some tiny holes in the contiguous surface over her nose and mouth, used as small ports to help her to breathe and feed. The same ugly layers of plaster casts, which patched her eyes, made her head to be a featureless white spheroid. Instead of her slim neck, Mike found only thick cast encasement, whose lower part strictly corsetted her whole torso as well.

The look-alike double shoulder spica casts ended in round ski-glove-like casts, incapacitating all her fingers and thumbs. A double hip spica disabled her lower body, with its attached long leg casts positioned in a wide straddle, forming a huge white ‘V’. For months, her legs were restrained in this shell from thigh to toes. Connected to a row of medical devices, there were some wires mounted on the cast suit to monitor her blood pressure, heartbeats, and breathing. As she was fully dressed in solidified bandages, she didn’t need to wear any gown or panties. The only piece of textile was a white blanket covering the cast opening for the loins.

‘Oh, my poor Julie,’ Mike mumbled half-loudly, while he tenderly placed his arm on the flat cast suit, which walled off his sweetheart from him.

‘Can we talk, Mr Warden?’ a visitor’s question awakened Mike.

Turning, he saw Dr York at the door. Not feeling like talking, Mike just nodded.

‘When Dr Ferris found out who your wife was, he tried to send her to our department. I suppose that their hospital simply wanted to get rid of her.’ Dr York stopped speaking, and then he started to talk about Julie’s health state. ‘I’d have liked to tell you something hopeful. But there is no good news. Both of us know that this is the third time when she is in full body cast. So, I can’t tell you anything new about her condition and treatment. I suppose that you know all the types of casts, and you know everything about the recovery and rehabilitation time.’

Mike nodded silently. If it had been the first time, the doctor would have talked about what a Minerva cast was, what the weird expressions such as ‘double shoulder spica’ and ‘hip spica cast’ meant. And how long time she would wear those damn casts. He would have said some words about when she would be put into smaller casts, and when she would get her wheelchair or crutches... But, after the third day, everything was clear. Damn clear and obvious.

‘Do you have any question?’ the doctor asked.

Mike shook his head, believing that he knew everything on this issue. However, he was wrong.

‘Mr Warden, I’ve got very grave news for you. Dr Ferris send me the medical data he could collect about the recent medical state and the outlook of your wife, based on the several medical examinations they carried out there. It seems that the time between the Fridays the 13th is not long enough for her bones to heal properly. The weakened skeleton won’t endure the reoccurring series of fractures, the long immobility caused by the casts, and the hard sessions of rehabilitation exercise.’

‘What does it mean, Dr York?’ he wondered.

‘Her bones are going to be more fragile after each Friday the 13th. Maybe, she can survive one or two or even three more days like this. But after that, the healing process is going to slow down progressively. And when getting to a certain stage, you must make a serious decision.’

‘What, Doc?’

‘If she wants to remain alive, she must stay in full body cast for the rest of her life.’

The End

cast <--Previous (Part 11)     Next (Part 1 of Day 4)-->

The Curse of Friday the 13th
Day 3
Part 11
Friday the 13th, 7:41 p.m.

‘I expected for something bigger.’

Inspecting her new casts, Julie made a dissatisfied face; however, the supplementing bandages weren’t too small in the least. The latest car crash had given two new items to the long list of her casts: a velpeau cast and a hip spica cast.

After the day-long accident series, rigid dressing confined all her limbs, and enveloped her head and completely coated her torso. Horribly, one single shell contained most of her body, being composed of an overlapping mix of a Minerva cast, a shoulder spica cast, a velpeau cast and a hip spica cast. Besides, there was a detached long leg cast, too, which, somehow, wasn’t a building element of this unordinarily immense cocoon. Hard, dome-formed dressings capped the top of the head and encircled the back part of her skull. On the front part of the ball-like head cast, a palm-sized opening was left between the eyes and the mouth to be a face window.

Other segments of cumbersome plaster casts wrapped her neck so tightly that she was absolutely prevented from moving the head. Deeply nested in the Minerva cast, Julie was able to look straight ahead only. The firmly cemented trunk cast maintained each bit of her body between the neck and the loins in a stiff pose, being a fixed hub for the spica casts spreading out to lock down three of her limbs.

A nicely shaped shoulder spica cast incapacitated her right arm, solidly flowing from the armpit over the flexed elbow down to the fingertips. This arm was pushed up at shoulder level, kept far away from the core cast capturing the body. Although her fingers and thumbs were saved from being bound, they just clang down uselessly out of the end opening of the chunky SSC.

Like the right arm, the left one was fully moulded in white material; however, its confiner wasn’t a shoulder spica cast but a velpeau cast, which tightly attached this body member onto the flat surface of the corset cast.

Unluckily for the poor Julie, even the lower limbs weren’t in a better health condition. Captured in a hip spica cast, the left leg was in an inflexible restriction, which was seamlessly integrated into the body cast. The other leg, being confined in a separate long leg cast stretching from the thigh to the foot, rested on a sponge hill. Settling on the top of the soft pile gathered on the right side of the bed, the tips of the toes humbly jut out of the well-padded LLC, looking like small pink islands in the Arctic Ocean of white plaster cast.

Unlike his curse-hunted wife, Mike had survived the crash unharmed, and now he was sitting by her bed to console her since the minute she had been admitted to hospital. Mike could only imagine how desperate and helpless she could be. Merely four hours were left to Midnight, and he had no idea how to save her from the third full body cast, because all their promising plans had failed or backfired, causing unneeded troubles to Julie. Having no better idea, he just wanted to spend the remaining time with her.

‘There are one or two more accidents out there, waiting for me. Unluckily there’s a long time until Midnight,’ she said, expecting a final push, which would send into an all-encompassing, fittingly made medical shell. Though her newest casts were big, they weren’t big enough for the Curse. Envyingly, she looked at the cast-free Mike. ‘It’s good to see you in one piece. This is my personal Curse, and not yours. It targets me only.’

‘It’s good to see them unharmed,’ Julie said, watching the slim fingers at the end of the shoulder spica casts. Then she wiggled them. ‘At most, they’ve got only four free hours until they get their well-deserved casts... It is so unfair. Why me?’ she continued her monologue. ‘I have to break... my pelvis... my jaw... my facial bones... my fingers and my toes by midnight. And nobody can help me... We’ve been under the ground, and the Curse has found me. We’ve been to a wizard... We’ve met a priest... There’s no hope.’

‘I never give up looking for a solution,’ Mike said, although he couldn’t give her any comforting answer.

A nurse entered the room, at the best time as they didn’t know how to continue the stranded conversation.

‘Mrs Warden?’ she asked, looking at Julie.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ Julie answered. Untold, she guessed why the nurse asked her name. Was there any other female patient in the hospital, packed into casts as many as hers?

‘I’m Nurse Christine, and Dr Ferris sent me here to talk to you about your transfer.’

‘My transfer? To where?’

‘As far as I know, Dr York, your previous treating physician from the Special Accident Care Unit asked our medical manager Dr Ferris to move you to his clinic.’

Julie didn’t reply. With a sad face, she thought that it would be dreadful to finish this day with a helicopter crash again. Yet, what she heard next was a bit relieving.

‘But Dr Ferris rejected his suggestion,’ the nurse continued the story. ‘He told Dr York that it would be too early to relocate you. Because of your extensive injuries, we should wait for a couple of days or weeks. Besides, after reading all the documents sent from the SACU, Dr Ferris got very curious about you. I mean professionally curious. He wants to talk to you, and he’d like to conduct several new medical examinations on you. So I’d like to take you down to the Exam-Ward, where the X-ray, MRI, CT and other...’

‘Do you need to do it, really?’ Mike asked as he didn’t want Julie to leave this room.

‘Dr Ferris insists on this request,’ the nurse answered. ‘Sir, you should talk to him if...’

‘Let it happen, Mike.’ Julie remained calm, already swimming with the tide, which carried her toward the full body cast. ‘We can’t hide from it.’

‘From what?’ the nurse inquired, but nobody answered.

Julie deterministically believed in getting her full cocoon, and Mike wasn’t able to do anything. Either he couldn’t stop her, or he wasn’t able to save her. The Invisible Hand of the Curse would strike on his wife at any minute.

The nurse rolled Julie’s gurney out of the room, and she pushed it along the silent corridor of the ward. Fearing the next accident, the cast-encased patient was far from enjoying the ride. Simply, she wanted to be over this damn day. At the end of the hallway, the short journey stopped at the lift shafts. Nurse Christine reached out to push the button to open the elevator door. Standing by the gurney, she sent a smile down at the heavily casted patient, who was nested into the cushions of the wheeled bed. After the door opened, the caregiver moved the gurney into the lift cabin with an easy toss.

But just before the nurse could have stepped into the compartment to follow her patient, she saw a shadow of a figure rushing along the corridor behind her back. Christine turned around to check it.

‘Hello, Dora!’ Christine cried to stop the other female, recognising an old-seen friend.

To talk to her, Christine happily receded from the lift, leaving behind the medical sculpture, which was formed from 100 pounds of Julie and 100 more pounds of plaster cast. The abandoned patient saw as Christine gladly greeted Dora, giving her a big hug. Christine’s joy got even greater when she noticed the golden jewel on the other girl’s ring finger.

‘Oh, jeez! A wedding ring? You’ve done it at last!’ Christine jumped for joy. ‘Tell me how it happened! In Las Vegas?’

Christine eagerly listened to the answer, not seeing the strange thing happening in the lift behind her back. However, her friend’s eyes got glued to the lift door, but, unluckily, the words failed Dora, who stopped talking. Christine supposed that something was wrong. Making a 180-degree turn, she saw the lift doors moving on their own. She jumped back to prevent the doors from fully shutting... yet, it was too late.

Julie was cordoned behind the quickly shutting metal plates. Defying the nurse’s will, the lift hermetically locked up, separating Julie in the sealed lift cabin from the people standing on the corridor.

What Mike could hear was loud shouting. From Julie’s room, he stepped out to the corridor to stare at the empty place where Julie’s gurney should have been, and to find two females hitting the closed lift door. His heart almost stopped beating, as he felt that the next strike of the Curse was imminent.

‘What the hell happened?’ he asked the panic-stricken nurses after he hurried to the elevators.

‘We can’t open the doors, and she's inside!’ Nurse Christine cried out, still fighting the door.

Checking the situation, Mike supposed that it was already too late to call the maintenance team, and he tried to open the door forcibly. But he wasn’t strong enough to defy the Curse.

Trapped in the lift cabin, and lying on the gurney, and fixed in firm plaster casts from head to feet, Julie could see only one of the corners of the cabin. First, she heard the muffled cries of the nurses, but a bit later, she could listen to Mike’s voice, too.

‘Take me out of here!’ she shouted to Mike, terrified by the thought of the next accident.

Hearing the voice of his trapped wife, Mike tried to open the door twice as hard.

‘Just a minute! Don’t worry!’ he answered, but even he didn’t believe his own words.

Waiting for the next disaster, Julie couldn’t do anything but being on the stretcher. Wearing massive casts on her head, neck and torso, and on all her limbs, she wasn’t able to stand up and to work on her escape. Hoping for a wonder, she peered up at the lift control panel mounted right to the door. Being within her arm’s reach, it was incredibly close to her, yet it was in an unachievable distance at the same time as both of her arms was fully disabled in rigid casts. When one was imprisoned in casts, then nothing was easy, even pushing a damn big emergency call button.

She couldn’t open the lift door, and Mike and the nurses weren't able to do, either. Julie was caged in the cabin. Flashing a glance at the rows of buttons once more, she got scared, figuring out the source of danger. Until now, Julie didn’t know in which floor her room was. On the LED display, she saw Number 14. However, under the tiny screen, she saw the digits, one by one. Crazily, a certain number was missing. That could mean only one thing...

Terribly fearing this dangerous number, the builders of this hospital had avoided using it. The symbol of the Floor 13 was simply missing. The good old triskaidekaphobia tricked and trapped Julie.

Hardly had she realised in which floor she was, Julie could hear some strange noise coming from the upper part of the elevator shaft. One after the other, the steel cables holding the lift cabin started to tear apart. Losing support, the compartment began shaking, and then it started to move down. At first, its sinking was slow, next, the construction began to fall freely from the height of the 13th storey toward the ground. For a split of a second, Julie’s body with its weighty cast load moved up from the bed, as she experienced the euphoric state of weightlessness. However, at the end of the short journey, she learnt what the revenge of gravity was. And, this time, she had no parachute to break her fall.

to be continued

cast <--Previous (Part 10)     Next (Part 12)--> cast

The Curse of Friday the 13th
Day 3
Part 10
Friday the 13th, 5:49 p.m.

‘You did it. What’s next?’

Mike asked the question, and he eagerly reached for the World Record Holder’s Certificate, which Julie was cradling in her cast-covered lap. Fearing for the hard-earned document confirming her place in history, the female was hardly able to give it to him.

Julie moved her left arm, which was merely encased in a short arm cast, to toss the joystick on the wheelchair control panel. Started up, the wheelchair got in motion, following Mike, who stepped out her restricted field of vision. Meanwhile, her husband found the right place for the gold-framed certificate. To place it on display, he put the document onto the ledge just above the fireplace. Reading it once again, he was proud of Julie’s amazing achievement, but, at the same time, he was happy because she had survived the horrible adventure.

‘I’ve found a new job for me on Fridays 13th,’ Julie talked after she halted the wheelchair so that she could be looking at the Guinness World Record Certificate awarded for the parachute jumper with most plaster casts ever. ‘I can be a stuntwoman, who can survive anything. Have you seen the video?’

‘The one that you made with the head camera? Brrr, it was like a found-footage horror movie. Especially, the part, when you couldn’t open the parachute. I thought that you would set a world record with your full body cast. Almost you turned into The Patient with the Largest and Thickest Full Body Casts Ever.’

‘That’s enough, Mike. Well, I was right, and I could do it. Next, I’ll write a letter to the Guinn...’

The doorbell rang, cutting off their conversation. Listening to the signal made by an unexpected visitor, Julie stopped talking about the next great idea in her mind.

‘Don’t worry. If it’s Mr Nilrem again, I simply kick him off.’ Swearing it, Mike left the living room to check the guest.

But, in the next minute, Julie didn’t hear the noise of either verbal or physical fight but only some scraps of a cordial talking. Obviously, Mr Nilrem was saved from getting slaps this time, since the visitor was someone else. Accompanied by Mike, a grey-haired, sixty-year-old man appeared in the room. Due to the black cassock he wore, Julie supposed that the guest could be a clergyman. Rightly, since Mike could confirm the assumption.

‘Let me introduce Father Andrew, the priest of the local parish. He’d like to talk to you.’

‘It’s nice to meet you, Mrs Warden,’ the pastor said. ‘Indeed, I’d like to talk to you. Or rather, from the nature of my profession, I feel obliged to talk to you. A member of my parish, your kind neighbour, who is a devout churchgoer told your story to me. She said that hellish forces are torturing you on this day, and all the Fridays the 13 for years. Shamefully, I was a Doubting Thomas when I listened to this lady. And now, I can see with my own eyes that her account about you was as terrible and true as it was told,’ Father Andrew bowed his head, kept watching the immense shells locking Julie.

Hit by the several blows of the Curse today, most of her body was embedded in rigid dressing. The most visible cast was the one, which was similar to a cast crown, completely wrapping the skull, and hiding the entire scalp, too. Thus, the thick layers of cast enveloped all part of the head, but for the face, which was framed by white bandages.

The medical neckpiece thoroughly froze the base of the head, and the rigid cast mantle around the torso contiguously expanded from the chest to the hips, closely following her shape. Besides, her right arm was incapacitated in an immense shoulder spica cast, keeping it away from the torso cast by a thick bar, which ran between the arm and body cast. Unfortunately, even her left upper limb wasn’t healthy, since it sported a plaster short arm cast, which started just below the elbow and ended at the base of the thumb. And finally, her plaster cast collection included two separate long leg casts, too, resting on a pair of horizontal supports, which were attached to the wheelchair. Julie was dressed in plaster, except for a tiny piece of clothes hiding her middle parts.

By late afternoon, not too many sound bones remained for the Curse to devastate: merely the left arm, some facial bones, and her fingers and toes.

‘Well, what is your judgement?’ Julie probed the priest casually, being a veteran cast-wearer. ‘Can you help me?’

‘I do everything to help you with the power of God.’

‘We aren’t Catholics, Father,’ Julie replied, looking at the priest’s clothing. ‘And to be honest, we aren’t too religious, either.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Mrs Warden. Like any of us, you’re a child of God. The Lord can help anyone. I can see that you have suffered a lot, but can you tell me in detail what kind of infernal accidents has happened to you so far?’

Hearing the wish, Julie sent a knowing smile to Mike. In this damn day, it was already the second occasion for them to tell the narrative to somebody. At first, it had been the wizard Mr Hawk, and now, the keen one-person audience was Father Andrew.

Mike just sighed, so it was Julie’s turn, who shared the cast saga with the priest, telling him almost everything, starting from the cause of the Curse (losing the Nilrem files, and doing a multi-million-dollar damage), sharing the terrible experiences of the accidents and the calamities of the first and second Friday the 13th.

As far as Julie remembered, she talked about the painful accidents she had gone through, the various types of plaster or fibreglass casts she had worn. Finally, she said some word about the full body cast experience, the months when she had been totally helpless, and she had been isolated from everything while surviving in the darkness and loneliness of her tailor-made and human-sized cast cocoon. But, carefully, she knew when to stop, as she skipped over their adventures in the secret COG shelter, from which she had been smoked out by a smart missile.

‘Father?’ she asked him to learn the priest’s view after finishing the story.

‘Ahem, the Curse acts much more sophisticatedly than I thought earlier,’ Father Andrew said, finding himself in the sin of pride. He got pale as he was listening to Julie’s story. ‘I feel that I’m too weak to set you free from the chains of this underworld power. You need to meet an expert, who is experienced in exorcism.’

‘Do you honestly think that my wife is possessed by an evil spirit?’ Mike asked.

‘Only God knows it, Mr Warden,’ he replied piously. ‘Your wife should come with me to the St. Mary’s Monastery, where she should spend the rest of the day. Hopefully, we can break the Curse by the nuns’ devoted prayers.’

‘I would be unbelievably grateful if you could break me free from the possession of this... diabolic curse,’ she answered, projecting a fake smile on her face, just after she could suppress a heavy laughter.

Mike scratched his head, supposing that if Julie had been able to survive a parachute jump, then she would go through any exorcism as well.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Warden, we’ll take care of your wife,’ Father Andrew said, after seeing the host’s worldly concerns. ‘But there’s an important question... about transportation.’ He stopped to measure Julie’s three limbs, which were kept fixed in an unalterable configuration. ‘I’m afraid that my car would be uncomfortably small for your wife. Well, if you don’t mind, Mr Warden, now, I give you the address of the Monastery,’ he offered a visiting card to Mike. ‘Now, I must go to the St. Mary’s to meet Sister Bernadette so that I could prepare a good room for you for tonight. And now, I’m praying for you so that you can arrive at the Monastery safe and sound,’ Father said, and he crossed himself.

***

Fettered by the pair of casts, which confined all the joints in her legs, Julie tottered toward the car, leaving the wheelchair behind. The distance was just ten steps between the vehicles. Or, precisely, it should have been a two-step distance. For a healthy person. However, Julie, torn and worn by the Curse, was far from being healthy.

A head-to-pelvis one-piece plaster mantle anchored her, making the neck and torso inflexible. The right arm was fully stuck in a voluminous shoulder spica cast. Besides, she had a SAC on the left one, as well, and her legs were incapacitated in a dual long leg cast. Due to the fastened body pose, she had to struggle even with getting in the car, too. Doing it, she bumped the protruding shoulder spica cast into the door of the vehicle.

‘Ouch,’ she said. Protected by the thick shell, she didn’t feel the ache of the accident, but she feared for ruining Mike’s car.

Seeing an accident like this, her husband just grinned, but a bit later, he almost bit his lips, when he heard as she knocked her cast-wrapped head against the roof of the car.

‘We must buy a big van if I can’t get rid of the casts,’ Julie suggested, shocked by the second mishap.

Mike didn’t reply to the half-joke, but he stepped closer to the backseats to adjust the seatbelt running across the corset-like cast to secure his troubled wife in the backseat.

‘Comfortable?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ she lied, smiling.

Already sitting in the backseat, she raised her left arm to check the integrity of the Minerva cast. Tough it was impacted, she didn’t find any leak but the unusual smooth cap woven from firm plaster. Meanwhile, Mike took the driver’s seat. Checking Julie in the interior rearview mirror, he saw her cast-surrounded face.

‘Okay, let’s go!’ He wakened up the engine. ‘Maybe this is the solution. I mean we couldn’t find a hiding place for you in an underground shelter. Perhaps, we should have looked for the answer in the opposite direction.’

‘Yes, in the heaven.’ Only her eyes moved upwards to search for the source of hope, but her head remained straight in the cast helmet.

The car rushed across the city toward a faraway suburb, which accommodated the Monastery. Of course, Mike drove fast but keeping the speed limit so that he wouldn’t offer Julie to the Curse on a silver platter.

Settling on the backseat, and confined in her shell, Julie was suspiciously quiet. Untold, she feared that this car ride would be an excellent opportunity for the Fate to catch her. Escaping, she was an ideal prey. She was about to ask some questions about the nuns when some icy forewarning almost stopped her heart, though the green traffic lights gave free way for their lane.


Strangely, the time slowed down. Feeling the terrible impact, which could crack her cocoon apart, Julie was a bit grateful for the accident, hoping that it would be the last one on this damn long day. Having tired of waiting for troubles, she wanted to give up. Honestly, she secretly wanted to be in a full body cast, where everything was quiet and peaceful, and nothing could do any harm to her anymore.

Tossed by the overwhelming force, the wreck, which Mike and Julie’s car turned into, performed its neverending pirouettes in the junction of the Friday Boulevard and the 13th Avenue.

to be continued

cast <--Previous (Part 9)     Next (Part 11)--> cast