Part 1: Kay Pacha
It all started with a book. A book that men believe will show them the way to a lost city. A city hidden in the green jungles of South America, obscured from view, lost in time. A book filled with details, but not facts. Details blended together with a dose of fiction sufficient to stir the imagination. It is this book that started it all. The book describes a people and a civilization lost in time. The lost city, according to the text, lies deep in the Amazon jungle, an escape, a retreat, the hidden Monastery of the once great Incan civilization. The Monastery is a secret site and when the Spanish Conquistadors ransomed and then executed the Incan king, the remaining royalty and priests and with their most sacred treasures retreated to this now forgotten place.
So now you know how it started. It started with a book. A book that sticks in your mind and makes your civilized life seem mundane. When you read it, you see the mountains that rise from the morning mist; you smell the pungent forest and hear the cry of the spider monkeys. You read this book and you want to find an ancient map upon which areas are marked as ‘unexplored territory’. You want to follow in the footsteps of the explorers who went before you and discover lost tribes and lost cities rich with gold. It started with a book that calls to you saying, “Let’s go adventuring,” and you hear its voice.
It started with a book. And now, as I write these words, I realize that it will end with a book as well. This will be a different kind of book. A book that is perhaps unlike any other you have read before. Dr. Rosen suggested that I should write down my thoughts. He says it will make me feel better. But that is not the reason I write. There is a different purpose to this story. A story about ambition unfulfilled. A story about potential wasted. This is my story, and I will tell it as best I can. I will tell it as I remember it.
When you get to the parts that you do not believe, or perhaps you prefer not to believe, when you read these phrases and passages, you can console yourself that these are the imaginings of an unstable mind. The ramblings of a mental patient whose clinical psychiatrist has suggested the writing of them will achieve a therapeutic effect. Secure with this knowledge, you can disregard the warning that rings out from these pages. In the end it really does not matter, if you believe or not, because there is nothing you can do to change what is now in motion. Relax; enjoy this bit of fiction, this tale of a misadventure and misfortune, this imagining from an unsteady mind. Do not worry for a moment that what I write next might be real.
It all started with a book. It will end with the culling.
- 1 -
He half opens his eye and through the pre-morning darkness the light of a green electronic display is staring back at him; unblinkingly reporting the incorrect time. He closes his eye softly and tries for a moment to remember his dream, a dream that is already receding from him. Dream images that seemed so lucid and dream conversations that were so urgent to his unconscious are now running from his thoughts. He lets them go. He opens his eye again and is greeted by total darkness.
The absence of the green incorrect clock resting on his dresser across the bedroom seems odd. Only half awake, he searches for a plausible reason. He closed his eye for a moment and now the green light of the digital clock is out. Had it burned out during this moment? It seems unlikely. Do digital displays of this design ever burn out? He cannot remember this happening ever before. Perhaps the power is out. As he considers the possibilities, he is careful not to move, not to change the soft and steady register of his breathing. The hypothesis that now seeps into his waking mind is disturbing. Is it possible that someone or something moved between his eye and the clock in that split instant when he closed and then re-opened his eye? Is it possible that whatever it is that is intruding into his bedroom somehow detected the slight motion of his eyelid raising and is now frozen; unexpectedly caught eclipsing the green clock?
He is unwilling to close his eye again. Not even for a second. If there is something hiding in the dark bedroom, he is going to see it move. He will not blink and allow it an opportunity to slip back into darkness.
He strains to keep his eye open. Staring into black hiding among black; waiting for the morning sun to illuminate the room and solve the mystery; he keeps his eye open until a tear drips down the side of his face and gathers into his ear. He keeps his eye open until he can keep it open no longer. Reflexively, he blinks.
The green inaccurate numbers glare back at him once again. Now he is awake.
His name is Verne Fielding and his right hand is numb causing him to fumble with the lamp at his bedside table. He slept uncomfortably on his arm during the night and now there is a tingling along his numb hand as blood flow returns to fingertips and slowly sensation is restored. His throat is dry and his tongue feels rough and swollen. Switching on the lamp by the bed reveals no intruder in the room. The room looks undisturbed. The lamp light illuminates the curves that are Veronica Vermillion, his wife, sleeping soundly, snoring slightly.
On the nightstand is a tumbler, half full and left over from last night. The oily alcohol has risen to the top of the glass floating amidst a bit of green lime; he sees clear liquid at the bottom of the glass. Grasping the tumbler with his un-numb left hand he drinks it down quickly. The clear liquid from the bottom of the glass opens his dry throat, the milky alcohol floating at the top helps to clear his head. It is morning. Monday morning.
On unsteady feet, he pads past the sunken bathtub with its wall of mirrors. He avoids checking his reflection as he makes his way through this shared space. He focuses on the carpet. Connecting to the central sunken tub are two private bathrooms. He opens his door and enters into his private space and then he closes the door quietly. This is his inner-sanctum. In here he will metamorphose and emerge as an entrepreneur, a business man and an adventurer. He turns on the hot water in the shower to full and soon hot steam is filling the room.
Now he begins from the inside out. He consumes a combination of pills that will help him achieve the perfect balance between awake and on-edge. He takes Omega three for his heart health, Vitamin E for his skin, Vitamin A and C just in case. He takes Folic Acid and Echinacea. These are large pills and he chases them with a shot of pomegranate juice extract. He cannot remember what the pomegranate is supposed to do, but it seems healthy. He waits a moment for his digestive system to kick-in; and now he brings the thunder. He ingests a combination of Prozac, Viagra and Propecia, and then chases these with a swallow of Vodka from a bottle that he keeps stashed under the sink. He waits until the warmth of the Vodka permeates outward and then enters the steam of the hot shower.
“Heat on heat,” he says to himself, a morning mantra.
Soon he is clean, awake, focused and virile. He is ready to face the day. On the way back past the sunken tub moving toward his dressing closet, he stops to admire his look in the mirror. He is clean, but not pampered; strong, but not athletic. He grips and then tugs at the flabby bit of paunch that clings uncomfortably to his middle. He has been on a perpetual diet for years, but more recently he started a new more intensive diet and workout regimen that he purchased from a late night TV infomercial. Judging from the pinch of flesh between his thumb and forefinger it is doubtful he is making any progress.
Verne ignores his image in the mirror and opens his dressing closet. Here hanging from several racks, is an array of new suits in a variety of sizes, each ready to be worn as he progresses to his future, slimmer self. Each new suit is waiting for him as he slims from one smaller waist size to the next. He decides to take a chance and he pulls the 34 inch trousers from the rack, but he can tell even before he tries to button them that these will not fit. So he moves up a size and selects his new, never worn, 36 inch waist grey trousers with pin stripes. It irritates him that he cannot wear these comfortably either, he can close the waistband but his belly protrudes uncomfortably over the top. He puts the 36 inch su
it back on the rack and turns to his older wardrobe which is kept further back in the closet. These older suits have 38 and 40 inch waistlines. He selects a dark suit together with a crisp white shirt and finishes with a red silk tie. The collar of his shirt will not button so he knots his tie in a double Windsor to keep his collar tight enough so no one will notice. He needs to look good today. Mike Vermillion will be back in the office.
Mike Vermillion is his step-father, and also his boss, and he watches Verne with a critical eye. It was not always this way. When he first met Veronica, when they were in college together, Verne was the bright boy with the big future. His poor grades did not seem to matter. He looked the part. Verne was on his way. His ideas did not seem half baked then. His wild dreams seemed possible, indeed probable. When Verne married Veronica, Mike Vermillion wrote them a fat check that paid off the credit card debt that accumulated while they were dating. With a fresh start, they moved into a small apartment and Verne set out to make his way in the world; to be a success.
Now, as he studies the contour of his wife’s wide hip asleep in their king size bed, her slender waist and delicate shoulder silhouetted against the morning light slicing in from beneath the window shade, he is reminded of a moment in time. Perhaps this is an image from the dream that escaped him when he was waking. The image of his wife stimulates a memory of a happier time. He remembers Veronica lying comfortably on their much smaller bed in that first apartment. It did not matter then, in those early days, if they were poor. It was expected. It was part of the unfolding drama, the little struggle that they must endure before the big success. He was so confident then.
The luxurious width of her hip sloping down to a delicate waist; her unkempt tangle of hair; seeing her asleep today, so many years later, she looks unchanged to him, and for a moment he is transported back in time to that morning. The memory comes crisply and clearly to his mind’s eye. He remembers how she woke up quietly and looked at him lovingly on that morning. The good wife, she felt secure in his confidence and his ambition, and an encouraging look from her warmed him and buoyed him along.
The morning light from the small window illuminated her silhouette. Her shape is a visual pneumonic stirring his old feelings of confidence and ambition. Her family, his family and Veronica herself, they all believed in his bright potential. It is a debt that remains unpaid. Worse than the credit card bills that mount up on the little desk in the study. Worse than the loan from his father for a business that faltered and then failed. Worse than the loans from her father that will never be repaid; a loan to get them into this house and a loan to pay for the girl’s private school tuition and so on.
“Thanks Dad,” she says, while Verne stands silently by.
He looks at her curves illuminated in the morning light; and he feels the weight of this debt. The promise of a potential unfulfilled. She expected him to succeed; this is why she married him. His failure to deliver on this unspoken promise is the reason that she no longer looks at him warmly as she did on that morning; this time he will deliver on his promise.
Today things will begin to change.
He starts up the Ford Taurus and begins to back down the driveway thinking about how the day will play out. Mike Vermillion, his father in law and his boss, has been away for six weeks and while he was gone, Verne was in charge of the travel office. But Verne knew he was not fully trusted to run the business. Mike’s friend and accountant, Barry Ross, keeps ‘stopping by’ unannounced.
“Hello Verne,” Barry says with a big goofy grin on his face, “I was driving by and thought I might just stop in and see how things are going.”
Sometimes Barry will ask specific questions about specific accounts or on another occasion he inquired about the monthly statements and invoices. Another time he inquired about Account Payables and the vendors.
“Payroll coming up next Friday Verne,” Barry said during his latest unannounced visit, and then he said,
“Have you checked the account balances to make sure there is enough money to cover the payroll checks?”
These visits are greatly resented. Verne knows he would have been trusted if he had started with the company the day after he married Veronica. Back then, he was the bright boy, his potential glowed like a halo around him. But this anticipation of success and confidence from his father-in-law had long ago been displaced by patience, and then eventually fatigue, and then finally pity.
Thinking about the upcoming encounter with his father-in-law, Verne decides that he better stop for a coffee. If he enters the office with an expensive gourmet coffee it will complete his image as the capable young executive on the move. He guides the Ford into the back of the drive-thru line for coffee and considers the large black drive up menu with coffees and drinks highlighted in white lettering. The right coffee sends the right signals. No whip cream of course.
“Tall Americano,” he says into the speaker and then pulls forward.
Americano is a tough cup of coffee; just espresso and steam, nothing fancy. As he waits, he realizes he is already late for work. It cannot be helped. Nothing he can do about it now. He cannot go back in time or condense the minutes it will take to drive from here to there. To distract himself from concerns about punctuality, he turns on the car radio. A pop song starts thumping out of his speakers.
Verne starts singing along, “You better get this party started!”
He pulls forward and rolls down his window to pickup his Americano. The barista at the drive in window is a tall girl with many hoop earrings all along her ear and also she has a stud on the side of her nose. She hears the music and begins dancing a little as she takes his five dollar bill and starts counting his change. Verne considers this fad for facial piercings and decides the barista looks cute in her green apron, pulled tight at the waist.
She hands him the hot cup with a smile. He smiles back and feels warm confidence welling up inside of himself. He takes a long sip of Espresso from the cup and it burns the top of his mouth and feels hot inside of his throat as he gulps it down.
“Fire in the belly,” he says to her, and then revs the engine like a teenager.
After pulling the Taurus confidently out into the commuter traffic, he turns up the radio. The beat of the pop song counts out the moments in time, each moment propelling him further along the highway, one beat closer to the inevitable.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends