Microstory 1387: The Medium Psych Zone

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Law Enforcement Officer: Hello, can I help you?

Supposed Psychic: Actually, it is I who can help you.

Law Enforcement Officer: Do you have a crime to report?

Supposed Psychic: Not exactly, but if you provide me with a little information, I’m sure I can come up with something.

Law Enforcement Officer: I’m sorry?

Supposed Psychic: Oh, forgive me. My name is Supposed Psychic, and I am a psychic.

Law Enforcement Officer: You’re a psychic?

Supposed Psychic: That’s right. Now, I’m sure you don’t believe in people like me—

Law Enforcement Officer: No, it’s not that. I believe there is more to this world than science can explain, but you’re going to have to prove to me that you’re someone who can tap into these truths. I can’t just take your word for it, and hand you off to the detectives. They would laugh me out of the station. So you’re going to have to prove it somehow.

Supposed Psychic: I can most certainly do that.

Law Enforcement Officer: Go ahead.

Supposed Psychic: I can’t just do it on command. I would need to shadow you for some time, and pick up on energies. Visions don’t come to me automagically. Something I see or hear has to trigger it.

Law Enforcement Officer: You want me to show you confidential police files?

Supposed Psychic: Only if you want to solve them.

Law Enforcement Officer: Okay. You can sit in here for a few minutes. I have to find the right file; one that can do no harm in your hands.

Supposed Psychic: Okay.

Law Enforcement Officer: [...] All right. Here we go. This should be fairly harmless. Here we have a picture of a tow truck driver who has been stealing cars all over the suburbs. His truck doesn’t have any markings, and this is the best photo of him, so we don’t know much. If you can tell us who he is and/or where to find him, I’ll consider telling my superiors about your abilities.

Supposed Psychic: Hmm.

Law Enforcement Officer: Do you need—

Supposed Psychic: Shh.

Law Enforcement Officer: Okay.

Supposed Psychic: [...] This is a fake. The man’s name is Tow Truck Driver Jr. Your car broke down four days ago, and he’s the guy who showed up when you called for help. You were charged seventeen dollars on a bill you believe the roadside assistance company you used should have covered in total. You were pleasantly surprised that your engine needed more work anyway, and it could have been much worse if you hadn’t needed service that day.

Law Enforcement Officer: Anything else?

Supposed Psychic: No, that’s about it. Do I have the job?

Law Enforcement Officer: You absolutely do not.

Supposed Psychic: What are you talking about? I gave you a good reading. Just because it wasn’t a case, doesn’t mean I didn’t prove myself.

Law Enforcement Officer: I posted all that information on social media. I don’t remember what the driver’s name was, so who knows where you’re getting that? I saw you standing in the lobby, pretending to be looking at the public bulletin board, but really you were just waiting for me to walk by, because I was your mark all along. I don’t know what you’re really after, but you’re not getting a look at our cases.

Microstory 1021: Florence

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When I was very young, I would watch my parents get drunk every week. And when they did that, they would always act stupid, and often break something. The next morning, they would promise themselves they would never do it again, but if it was Saturday, they would be right back at it the next night, and if it was Sunday, they would do it again on Friday. I don’t know what happened to them that made them stop, but one day, we packed up, and moved to Blast City. They have been the epitome of civil ever since, so much so that no one until today has ever known anything about our real past. Anyway, either because I saw how bad things can get when you drink, or I saw how much better my parents were when they got sober, I don’t do it myself. In fact, I’m infamous for being a designated driver. I tell everyone I know that, if they ever find themselves drunk away from home, they can always call me for a ride. No one ever takes me up on that, partially because the town itself is literally small, so it’s not that hard to walk from one end to the other, but also because no one really pays attention to me. We also have a couple drivers for one of those ride-sourcing companies, and they kinda need the money, so that’s fine. Well, I don’t know exactly what went down, but Viola took me up on my offer once. She called me from some bar in Coaltown, totally wasted. I could barely understand what she was saying, and when she tried to text me the address, it wasn’t even comprehensible. I had to ask a random guy walking down the street which bar she would be talking about. Well, this was the dead of winter; probably the coldest night of the year. Yeah, it was, we had that winter storm that took school off the table for, like, a week. You weren’t here yet, I guess, but it was real bad. So bad, that the ice ran us off the road, and into a tree. The force of the crash, plus the weight of the snow, knocked a branch right on top of my car. I couldn’t even start it again, so there we were, freezing our asses off, alone in the dark. I called a tow service, but since the conditions were no better throughout the county, it was a long time before anyone could show up. Fortunately, ever the girl scout, I was prepared with emergency water, a med kit, and blankets. We ended up crawling into the backseat, and cuddling together for body heat. Before you stick your head in the gutter, nothing happened. She passed out thirty minutes before the truck arrived, and hauled us out. She was so messed up that she didn’t even remember that any of it happened, but I didn’t have to prove it to her, because I took pictures for insurance purposes. I suppose I have the magic touch, because according to a lot of classmates, she didn’t have one more drop of alcohol the rest of her life. That’s what really gets me about this whole thing, because if they found drugs in her system, she was not the one who put them there. I don’t believe it. There’s something we don’t know about what happened by the river that fateful day, and I don’t understand why they seem to not be trying to figure it out.

Microstory 220: Bad Thoughts (Part V)

Part I: Triple Threat
Part II: Wreckless
Part III: Friendly Fire
Part IV: Police Brutality

I refuse to move from my triangle of safety, even as the other drivers beg me to. I say that I want to wait for the authorities to arrive, but the truth is that I just can’t move. Literally, I’m paralyzed. I instruct my legs to bend at the knees, and for my hands to brace myself on the hood of the little red sedan while I twist over and slide to the ground. Nothing. I look down the street, over the sedan, and witness a bus crash into a tow truck. It’s an odd coincidence, but not enough to shock me out of my ongoing fear. I turn my head and see another car on fire, down behind the black truck. Holy crap, this can’t be a coincidence! This is fate! Someone upstairs is upset with me, for whatever reason, and is piling on the bad luck. I look through the windows of the white cargo van to see a police cruiser rear-end the car ahead of him. Okay, now I know something is seriously wrong with reality. That would never happen. Cops are too careful. I’m the cause of this all, and I have to figure out how to get out of it. The cop then rams his cruiser into the back of the van, and continues to push forward, trying to get at me. The tow truck driver comes up and swings his machinery against the sedan like a wrecking ball, hoping each time that it knocks me over the head. The car that’s already on fire drivers around us in circles, setting off minor but continuous explosions from all the other vehicles. I shut my eyes and concentrate, then I turn the ignition in my own car. I back out of the garage and head for the store to buy chocolate. No walking for me, not today. I never know if my premonitions are real, because I always work to subvert them. Better safe than sorry. I’ll start exercising tomorrow. I promise.

Microstory 217: Wreckless (Part II)

Part I: Triple Threat

I grew up on a farm, and so I’ve been driving heavy machinery since I was eleven years old. When I moved into the city, about the only thing I could do to make money was driving. I drove a cross country truck for a couple years, a cab for a couple more, and I even spent several months as a chauffeur for fancy people. But at the end of the day, I decided to go with tow trucks. I looked into a few different companies, but landed on one that requires every driver to have experienced precisely zero vehicular collisions in their lifetime. I’ve always been a pretty outgoing guy, but I’ve also been told that I have a very calming and comforting voice. They never send me out to tow vehicles that have been abandoned for one reason or another. No, I’m the dedicated people person. Whenever the company gets a call from someone who sounds particularly frustrated or distraught, or if it’s a repossession with a strong likelihood of encountering the owner, I go in. And man, do I love what I do. For me, this is just any other day, but for our clients, this could be an extreme inconvenience. It’s my job to get them where they’re going safely, making sure that the process is as smooth as possible, and I take it very seriously. These aren’t just numbers on a clipboard; these are people, and their feelings matter. Today is a weird one, though. The call doesn’t go through dispatch; it goes straight to my cell phone. I remember immediately the man on the other end of the line, along with his little red sedan. I didn’t have to work on his car when we first met. He had run over a cooler that had fallen onto the highway. He thought that it had punctured something under his car, but the fluid appeared to have been coming from the cooler instead. Still, we kind of hit it off, and I gave him my card. Now he’s a bit frenetic, but he says something about hitting two cars at the same time, and that there was a pedestrian in the middle of it. I hop into my truck and carefully speed off. I’m nearing the intersection, close enough to see what the client is talking about, when a bus runs a red light and crashes into me, costing me my job.

Part III: Friendly Fire

Part IV: Police Brutality

Part V: Bad Thoughts

Microstory 69: Breakdown

I blew a tire out on my way to the bulk store today. It was just another in a series of problems I’ve had with my car. It’s so old that, last week when my muffler was dragging on the ground, the mechanics had to build a new one out of parts. They literally don’t make them like they used to. I was already late to help my mother with the heavy groceries, so it was even more humiliating rumbling and shaking like a crazy person, trying to desperately make those last couple of blocks. After getting the groceries, my mother needed help unloading them, so I rode with her back to her house. I tried calling a tow truck, hoping to meet them back at the store, but they said they wouldn’t even send one out unless I was already there waiting for them, so I borrowed my father’s truck and left. Apparently this was a big day for tows, because it took them almost an hour to reach me. The driver had to find a workaround because I evidently don’t have any “hook points” in the front. But he finally got it strapped down, and we headed out for the tire shop.

I was told that I had arrived at the tire place with enough time to install new tires before closing, but it took them much longer than expected; so long, in fact, they they wouldn’t be able to finish until tomorrow. That was extremely annoying, but my dad didn’t need the truck since they were going to be out of town for a couple of days. As it turned out, it didn’t matter since the truck refused to start anyway. There was a guy sitting in his own car nearby who heard me dealing with it and was 99.9% sure they it was something called the “fuel pump”. He had me stick my head in the tire well to prove it wasn’t making the sound it was supposed to. Having no other choice, I began the long walk back home. When I finally got back, exhausted and just wanting to go to bed, I found police officers escorting a man in handcuffs from my front porch. I asked one of the officers what was going on at my house. He answered, “he just robbed the liquor store down the street, across from the police station. It’s a good thing you weren’t home. He’s been holed up in there for hours, claiming to have hostages.”