CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK Read online

  Looking into the bag of chips, Grizelda said, “Yeah. I know what these are. That’s what I’ll do; turn you in to a potato chip! How’s that sound, Charlie?”

  With a toothy grin, the big cat hissed, “Yessss!”

  In a quaking voice, Mike said, “Asleep or not, I’m getting the hell out of here!” Quickly rising from his chair, he felt a rush of dizziness overcome him. With the room spinning around, he looked down at the intimidating cat-rider. She was mumbling and gesturing wildly with her arms over her head. Suddenly all he could see were black boots, but they were enormous! Somehow, he was lying on the table, looking up at her! And now she was huge and the cat was monstrous!

  Charlie’s giant head lowered toward Mike, a long pink tongue flicking out. “Ssssalty!” he hissed.

  “Of course,” retorted the giant cat-rider. “He has ridges too! I do good work, Charlie.” Glaring down at Mike, she admonished, “Now boy, how does it feel to be a lowly potato chip? But don’t worry yourself any. My spell will wear off in half an hour or so. I think. Sometimes my spells last longer. I never can tell anymore. Magic ain’t what it used to be. Well boy, when you come out of your transformation, I want you to think back on my story. If you don’t want me coming back here and going through this again, then you’d best be telling everyone what old Grizelda told you. Folks should know about Unicorns”

  The monstrous-sized cat crouched low so his amused cat-rider could climb aboard. With an easy motion, the cat jumped three feet to the window, and turned around looking down at him. Grizelda adjusted her floppy black hat, saying, “Hmph! Don’t you worry boy, you’ll come out of the spell.”

  The cat gave another toothy grin, saying, “Maybeeeowww!” then jumped out of the window with a flick of his long tail.

  Mike was in a panic. He couldn’t feel his heartbeat. I’m dead! That’s why I can’t feel my heartbeat. I died! But he knew that wasn’t right. He could feel, some things, just not his body. And he didn’t think the dead could feel anything.

  Concentrating intensely on what he could feel, he felt the cold, hard table beneath him. He also felt the rush of cold air flowing down on him from the open window. The window was so far above him, he could barely see it, but he could still hear the dripping of water from the gutters and the twittering of birds.

  Turning his concentration to his body, he couldn’t feel any arms, feet or other body parts. What he did feel were bumps. Weird bumps. In horror he realized they were ridges! All over his body and they ran in uniform lines. Trying to see the little that he could of his body, he faintly saw lumps. No, it can’t be!, he thought. But it was what he feared, lumps of salt all over him. His mind twitched in revulsion as he cried, My God! Somebody wake me up! I’m having a nightmare! Help! Help!

  Then he froze in fright, as much as a potato chip could.

  Movement . . . by the bag of chips. A brown cockroach was tentatively crawling over the bag! The roach was as big as a full-sized car. And it was heading straight for him!

  He tried to move, but couldn’t. Of course, you idiot! In this dream you’re a potato chip, and they can’t move!

  The roach inched closer and closer, slowly crawling down the bag of chips, legs making scratching noises as they moved, antennae twitching around, seeking something to eat. The pair of antennae were bigger and longer than any of Mike’s fishing rods. One of the antennae slowly descended, landing on Mike, the other one right behind it. The antennae lightly skimmed over the potato chip, searching. And Mike could feel each stroke, his mind shuddering in revulsion! In a mad panic, Mike tried to remember if cockroaches ate potato chips!

  His panic turned to absolute terror as the giant cockroach slowly inched its way on top of him! He could actually feel the weight of the cockroach, all six legs moving independently as it roamed over him, plus the fine hairs tickling his potato skin.

  As the roach was nibbling on a piece of salt, a piece of Mike’s chip body suddenly broke off with a slight snap. He could see a part of himself, lying there, disconnected. Losing a piece of his body hadn’t hurt. It just broke off. As the roach continued wandering over him, he realized he was cracked. He had a crack all the way across his body. As he focused on the crack, he could feel the crack widening. The weight of the crawling cockroach was going to break him in two!

  He yelled, “Shoo! Shoo you! Get off me, damnit!” Then he remembered that potato chips can’t talk. Mentally he screamed, Damn you, Grizelda! Why did you make me with a crack?!

  The roach quickly scampered off and Mike did a potato chip equivalent of a sigh of relief. Then he heard a familiar voice.

  “Mike? Honey? Are you here?” Tammy’s voice echoed through the small apartment as she advanced into the bedroom. “I got off early today, honey. What’s for dinner? You have anything planned yet? I went to the store if you don’t.” Tammy stopped in the doorway of the kitchen, looking around, perplexed. “Hmm. I wonder where he is.”

  He watched Tammy as she shrugged out of her coat, laying it on the bed, then headed for the bathroom on the other side of the kitchen. She was carrying a sack and as she passed the kitchen table, she set the grocery sack down, right on top of Mike. CRUNCH!

  No pain. Just a vague disconnected feeling.

  In utter darkness, and with the sound of rustling paper and thumping on the table, he felt the weight of the sack lighten as Tammy took out the contents. Suddenly there was light as she lifted the sack off the table. Mike took inventory of his broken body. He was broken into at least three pieces, and Tammy absentmindedly picked up one piece and ate it.

  With heart-thudding, (if he had a heart), understanding, Mike realized that wherever he was, he was only in one piece of the broken potato chip. Then he angrily reminded himself, Christ man! You’re out of your tree! You’re having a daydream.

  But his dream took on a sense of reality as Tammy made a face and went, “Yuck! Stale!” and brushed the rest of the broken chip into her palm. Panic was quickly becoming the order of the day as he felt the warmth of her hand as she slowly closed her hand into a fist, crunching him into tiny pieces. The next thing he knew, he was lying on top a bunch of cold potato peelings. He knew then, that she had thrown him into the garbage sack.

  As his body kept getting broken down smaller and smaller, Mike realized that his conscious mind, soul, whatever, was actually in only one small piece of the potato chip. But which one?

  He kept repeating to himself, Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream! He was rudely distracted from his mantra when something cold and wet was pushed down over him. Trying to decipher what it was, he recognized it as the bag from the thawed out chicken.

  As Tammy was pushing down harder on the garbage, she mumbled a complaint to herself, “He never gets the garbage ready until the last minute. I might as well do this now. Then it’ll be ready for tomorrow morning.”

  With a nonexistent heart in his throat, Mike remembered that tomorrow was trash day. How long was this stupid dream going to last? Would he end-up in a garbage dump somewhere?

  Bunching the garbage into a big, black sack, Tammy fastened the bag with a twist tie, then went into the bedroom to change before she started dinner. As she unsnapped her bra, she let out small sigh of relief. Hearing loud crackling and thrashing noises, she jerked her head toward the kitchen. A jumble of garbage was strewn across the kitchen floor, and in the middle of the shredded garbage bag, laid a thrashing Mike!

  Jumping from the bed, glaring down at Mike, Tammy yelled, “What the hell are you doing, Mike? Where did you come from? Stop that! You’re throwing garbage all over the place!”

  Mike’s now-existent heart was beating a million miles an hour as he struggled to sit up. Potato peelings, coffee grounds and other garbage were clinging all over him. The chicken bag was sitting on his head, blood dripping onto his shoulders. Looking down at his shaking hands, he swore he could see little lumps of salt, so he wiped his hands over and over on his garbage covered pants.

  Kneeling in front of him in only her pan
ties, Tammy asked sarcastically, “Okay smartass, how many beers did you have today?”

  Unable to speak, white-faced, Mike sat there, repeatedly wiping his trembling hands on his filthy pants.

  With concern, Tammy studied Mike. “You okay, honey? You look like you saw a ghost or something. What a mess you made in here. What’s going on anyway?” She grabbed an arm and helped him to his feet. He stumbled off, without a word, to the bathroom.

  Cleaning himself off in the bathroom, he saw a cockroach crawling up the wall. With a growl, he smashed the roach so hard with his fist that he punched a hole into the wall. He pulled his hand back with a loud, “Oww!”

  From the kitchen Tammy asked, “Are you alright, Mike? Didn’t I tell you that sitting around all winter was going to drive you nuts? Maybe you should find a different type of work, honey. A job where you won’t have so much spare time. Oh, by the way, I put the chicken in the oven. Thanks for taking it out to thaw. I’ll go ahead and cook dinner tonight if you want. I’m pretty hungry. If we weren’t so broke we could order a pizza.” Stopping her one-sided conversation, Tammy asked in puzzlement, “Say, where did you get these? This is cute. Are these for me? Maybe from a doll set?”

  Mike slowly wandered back into the kitchen. Tammy looked over at him. “Oh! You really don’t look good, honey. Don’t you feel well?” Taking his hand, she guided him to a chair. “Here, sit down. Maybe you just need something to eat.” Picking up the bag of chips, she held the bag out to Mike. “Want some potato chips?”

  Mike frantically yelled, “NO! Don’t eat those?” Snatching the bag out of her hand, he hastily stashed the bag on a shelf. With a heavy tread, he walked to the table and sat heavily in the chair.

  “Wow! Somebody had a bad day, didn’t they?” Sitting wearily in his chair, Mike stared up at the open window as Tammy said soothingly, “Hey, I’m here now. Everything will be fine.” Reaching toward the table, Tammy asked, “Where did you find this at anyhow? It’s cute, honey.” She held up Grizelda’s small, blue speckled, metal cup.

  Mike fell out of the chair, face-first, in a dead faint.

  Connect with Sahara Foley at:

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaharaFoley

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sahara.foley

  Smashwords author profile: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/saharafoley

  Blog: http://sharafoley.blogspot.com/

  Other books on Smashwords:

  Tescara

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++

  ARTHUR MERLIN: The One and Only

  Coming out in 2014

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I have no idea why you get so adamant about this, Dr. Tober”, said a tall, thin woman, wearing a white lab-coat and a conservative, grey pinstriped skirt with matching expensive pumps. Arms loosely crossed against her chest, lips pursed, she was peering down at a shorter man who had large soft brown eyes, made even larger by the coke-bottle lenses of his glasses.

  “As I’ve told you before Dr. Burns,” the shorter man in a rumpled, brown suit explained impatiently, “having multiple psychic abilities is only theoretical. We have never found clinical proof that a person can have multiple paranormal abilities. And the few people we have found, with just one ability, are sad specimens, indeed.”

  “Commander Dobie seems perfectly satisfied with the results from William and Halvorson.” the lady said with a trace of annoyance in her soft, cultured voice, toying with a man’s gold wedding band threaded onto a gold necklace around her neck. “And after all, he is in charge of the Institute, sir.”

  “Yes, quite Doctor, as he is so fond of reminding me.” Pushing up his glasses in irritation, he picked up some reports and headed toward a door. “Should anyone need me, I’ll be in my office.”

  Sighing with frustration, Ruth strode stiffly to her workstation and sat down, crossing her long, thoroughbred legs. Picking up a gold-plated pen with manicured, soft pink fingernails, she started doodling on a yellow legal pad.

  Another voice quietly reprimanded her from the far corner of the room. “Ruth, you shouldn’t keep reminding Dr. Tober about Commander Dobie. You know how upset he becomes over bureaucrats and their paperwork.” This man was short and round, also wearing a white lab-coat that made him resemble a giant marshmallow. He had curly blonde hair and sparkling, periwinkle eyes. He waddled over to her workstation and continued, “I can understand your place here, the pressure of trying to find the perfect specimen, when we know perfectly well that if such a person truly existed, we’d never know of his existence.”

  “Yes, Gordy.” She agreed with a soft, resigned sigh. “And if we did, the person would have so much psychic power that they couldn’t possibly be controlled, not by us anyway.”

  ==========

  For the past half hour I’d been hanging around, invisible, eavesdropping on the Doctors. I referred to this trick as my ‘Almost Mode’. Learning this ability had taken weeks of practice and resulted in some very embarrassing moments. It’s amazing what happens when a person materializes out of thin air among a group of people. I’ve caused ear screeching screams to drop-dead faints and a few times even mild coronaries. Not to mention the people who wet themselves over the smallest provocation.

  ==========

  “Do you ever feel like we’re just wasting our time here?” She was still doodling on the yellow legal pad, looking as if she’d just lost her best friend.

  “If I felt like that I’d have left the Institute years ago,” Gordy confided, leaning one round buttocks against her table top. “Think of the specimens we have found so far. Not just Williams and Halverson, but the others that showed one type of the phenomena or another.”

  “I know, but every year it’s harder to obtain funding, and after twelve years, all I have to show for our research is several hundred miles of computer tapes.” With a slight shrug she added, “Oh, and a few tons of paperwork in boxes that no one really cares about. This is all rather depressing sometimes.”

  Waddling to a cabinet, her lab partner pulled out a folder. “I seem to remember a few years ago, a young woman very excited about this man.” He plopped the manila folder on the table in front of her.

  “But I was only twenty-two back then, and Uri was my first contact with the phenomena.” She explained, ignoring the closed folder.

  “Yes but certainly not your last.” He replied, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  Ruth glanced up at Gordy with a thoughtful frown. “Do you really think it’s possible for one person to have more than one aspect of the phenomena?”

  Picking up the ignored file with stubby fingers, he slid it back into the drawer. “Do you remember Mrs. Holmquist?” Twirling the wedding band around on her necklace, his unhappy co-worker nodded reluctantly. “Then you should remember, for a brief span, how many psychic tendencies she exhibited.”

  With a sigh of exasperation, she rose from her chair, striding gracefully over to a hot-plate and poured steaming water into a monogrammed mug, then added a tea bag and sugar. Talking over her shoulder, she disputed, “Yes Gordy, but she was a fluke and you know it.”

  “Call her what you will Ruth, but for three weeks we had our hands full with that woman.” Gordy reminded her, following her to the hotplate.

  “I remember. I still have the paperwork.” She took her steaming mug and returned to her workstation, trailing behind her a faint scent of herbal tea. “But if she never had that car crash she would never have shown any of them,” Ruth pointed out.

  “Aha, but we don’t know that for sure. She may have done some of her tricks for years, and never even noticed.” Now he poured hot water into a bright-yellow mug.

  “How could someone do everything that Mrs. Holmquist did and never notice?” She sent him a skeptical look as she swirled the teabag in her cup.

  He poured a generous amount of sugar into his hot water and stirred, but no tea bag. “The same way you aren’t noticing what you’re doing with your spoon.” Gordy nodded toward her m
ug.

  ==========

  Moving over a few steps to see what the Doctor was doing, she glanced directly at where I stood; a funny look on her face. She had the spoon balanced on the edge of her mug.

  ==========

  “Oh, this is nothing, just an idle habit of mine.” She dismissed with an elegant wave of her hand.

  “Precisely Ruth, just as Mrs. Holmquist may have telekinetically opened and closed doors for years, never paying any attention to what she was doing. If a habit feels natural and done often, we take it for granted more often than not.”

  “Yes, I understand what you’re saying, but that doesn’t explain how she could move things, start fires, even go to sleep in one place but wake up in a different place. Sometimes so far away the journey would have been physically impossible to make in the time allowed.” Ruth argued, removing the teabag and dropping it into the wastebasket next to her workstation.

  “Yes, but all of Mrs. Holmquist’s psychic abilities occurred after her concussion from her car crash, then after three weeks, just stopped.” Gordy patiently reminded Ruth as he waddled back to his corner with his steaming mug of sugar-water.

  “So, what are you saying, as if I didn’t already know?” Ruth asked with a slight frown.

  “I’m afraid I side with Dr. Tober on this subject. I think we have the latent tendencies in us, maybe not everyone, but certainly many of us, and with the right stimulation they manifest themselves.” Ruth toyed with her spoon, looking doubtful. Dr. Gordy continued. “And I feel strongly, as Dr. Tober does, that out there is someone who has these and other aspects of the phenomena. Some we may not be aware of yet.”