Dead To Me

She paused to shuffle the pile around with her stained fingers. I raised my eyebrows at Co

“Yes, Mrs. T?” I asked. “Whatis it?”

I tried to hide my a

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

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

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

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

Co

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

Quietly, I turned to Co

“And certainly better-looking women, too,” Co

I sighed.

Co

“Right,” I said sheepishly. “Sorry.”

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

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

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

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

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

Through the blur of tears, her sympathetic face and frosted blond stack of hair came into focus. Lucidity kicked in again and I compressed time, speeding it up until I found the boy standing at the counter of a pe

I pulled out of the vision. Co

“Juice! And an iced coffee with five sugars!” Co

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

“You’re not the first noob I’ve instructed on this,” Co

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

Downing the rest of the juice, I attempted to further shake off some of the weariness and felt slightly better for my effort.

“Well?” Co

“Well, it’s not part of any case we’re working on,” I said. I raised my eyes. “This is something specifically fromyour past, Co

He kept his face poker-straight and returned the dispenser to his pocket.

“Why do you say that?”

I scrunched up my face as I tried to find the words. I explained what I had just experienced in full detail right down to the dull look on Co