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Perilous Delivery

Chapter 2. The Beginning of Woes

By Kevin J.N. HughesPublished 3 years ago 12 min read
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The next day began like most any other. Caleb often worked on Saturdays as part of his often vain seeming effort to bring in enough cash. As was her custom, Vanessa would make him breakfast before he left, and they would spend a little time together before he worked. As he sat there eating his waffles and sausage, he smiled, “Well,” he began, “I get to try out the new car today, see how she handles the workload.” He smiled and took a bite. Vanessa smiled too, then went back to reading her book. They were pretty tired so there wasn’t much conversation. Caleb finished his meal, put his dishes in the sink, threw on his jacket and started to walk out. As he was leaving their phones dinged, Vanessa looked over, “That is a reminder.” She said, “we are going to the Holdens’ house party tomorrow night.” Caleb looked over and smiled, “Oh yeah, I like the Holden family, nice people.” He began, “Do you want to try and get them a housewarming gift tonight, or on the way tomorrow?” Vanessa thought a moment and said, “We can do it on the way, it’s nothing major, just a bottle of whine or something should do the trick.” Caleb smiled, nodded, and walked out the door.

He began his work day by driving to the 82 gas station at the intersection of Kauffman and Fourth Plain which was just under a mile from home. While filling up, he took a delivery job, and sat a moment thinking. He watched as the Dice Pizza truck dropped off some ingredients to the Dice Pizza place that was in the same building as the convenience store of the 82, and gave a friendly smile to the truck driver. He felt a certain kinship with delivery drivers of all kinds, since his job with Shoppersupport was in that dimension.

When his tank was full, he began to drive to his delivery, taking his receipt. As he was driving, he hooked his phone up to the AUX cord of his new car and began to listen to a song. He pulled up to the Mayor’s grocer on Tenny just as the song’s last line played, “I am a dreamer” the soft voice of the English singer pleadingly called out, “but when I wake, you can’t break my spirit, it’s my dreams you take.” Just as he pulled the cord from the phone, which he thought would automatically pause the Musicfly system, the speaker made a popping noise, almost like a glitch, and the music stopped, but an acapella voice came on, almost whispering, “It’s your dreams I’ll take.”

“What the?” He stopped for a moment. “How bizarre,” Caleb said to himself. He opened the car door and started to walk into the store. He didn’t think much of it, just a glitch in the sound system. From now on, if he used his phone for music or audiobooks, he would pause before he unplugged rather than after. He mused in his mind that the effect that doing the opposite had produced was truly odd. It didn’t sound anything like the singing voice of the British man he had been listening to. Rather, it sounded more like a woman’s voice. He thought it was funny that it happened that way.

Caleb didn’t have time to ponder anything to do with the radio. This order was a small one, so he hoped he could get through it fast. He grabbed the Cilantro first, then the peppers, then three packs of ramen, two bottles of King’s Cola, and a Nutter bar, then he was off to the delivery address. The people at the door were friendly, as they took the bags. Then the woman looked surprised and said, “Oh, thank you young man.” Caleb smiled and said, “Just doing my job.” As he was walking away he heard her say to her husband something about getting more than they had ordered, and how nice that was. An odd thing to say since he had gotten exactly what they had ordered, but no time to think about it, it was on to the next delivery.

As he was driving he was listening to an audiobook. Plato’s Republic, he was pondering the cave as he pulled up to Subdrive to get a sandwich for his lunch between deliveries. He contemplated what to get for the Holdens, and he drove about, some of the people he was delivering to were regulars, some new, it was a normal day.

Just as the day was winding down, he got a large order for the PriceCo. Well, it was just a small order, actually but the tip was huge. “Whoa!” He said to himself looking at it, the tip alone was almost twenty dollars. “I wish everyone tipped like that.” He said as he swung the Cruz over onto 88th and started heading towards Priceco near Orchards. He grabbed the few items, drove up to the door of the house, and a man answered. The man who answered was a large, burley man, with a beer belly hanging low outside his white sleeveless shirt, which was stained with Cheesy-Puff grease. The man looked surprised, “What can I do you for?” The man asked curtly. Caleb cocked his head, held out the box of groceries from PriceCo and said, “I’m delivering your groceries…” with and inquisitive air in his tone, not rude, but just clarifying. The man frowned, “I didn’t order nothin’.” Caleb looked at his phone with the address, and read it off to the man, “This is your address, right?” The man nodded, “And you are… or at least, is there an Amanda B, here?” The man’s frown deepened, “This some kinda joke boy?” He half grunted out. “Amanda is, well, was my daughter. She died after she moved in with that boyfriend of hers. Her death was even in the news.” Caleb felt a sickening in his stomach. “I’m, I’m so sorry sir. I don’t know how this…” Before he could finish the man took the groceries, from his hand and sighed, “It’s not yer fault,” he said, “Have a good’n.” The door to the rural home shut as Caleb walked away. He drove off thinking that was a strange one, but he didn’t have much time to ponder it, it was just about quitting time and he had a feeling something good would be on the stove when he got home. Meanwhile, Cheesy-Puff man was staring out of his window, that car looked mighty familiar to him, it looked just like the car his daughter’s boyfriend used to drive. He stared out of the window of his small manufactured home.

Just before he could watch Caleb pull away though, he was startled by a sudden noise, his dog was barking angrily, and his television set came on, blaring disturbingly loudly. It was some kind of commercial, “You know you’re going to get it Anyway! Make sure you come in before the sale ends next week!” He walked in to turn the television off, confused by how loud it was, and by the fact that it came on so suddenly. As we was going over to turn it off though, Caleb pulled away in the Cruz, and the television seemed to freeze, a sign next to the marketer on the screen read, “You’re going to get it any” and was cut off before it could finish the sentence that had just been uttered.

He looked around and his dog started whining. Something was unsettling about it. But he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

Caleb came home for dinner, homemade burgers and fries. He walked in just in time to help Macrina set the table, and tell Pedro to wash his hands before dinner. After they ate, he and Vanessa talked about the housewarming party that was the next day after church, discussed their respective days, and had some time with activities with their kids. Pedro wanted to show them a picture he had drawn them. It was four stick figures standing besides a sort of rectangle, with a protruding square, and two protrusions below of oval shape. “That’s your new car” he said proudly, “That’s mommy, daddy, me, and Mackie” he exuberantly declared, patting each stick figure as he showed them. Vanessa smiled at him, “Good drawing mi hijo, but what is that? Is that a doggy?” She pointed at what looked like a shaggy dog in what would be the backseat. “No mommy,” Pedro answered with the childish exasperation of the misunderstanding of their Picassoesque artistic genious, “That’s the lady who Mackie and I saw in the backseat when we brought Daddy’s new car home.” Vanessa and Caleb laughed, and Caleb replied through chuckles, “You kids are funny. I sure hope there wasn’t a lady in the car.” Pedro frowned and said, “There was, and Stella [the family’s pet German Shepherd], barked at her so she went away.” Caleb looked at the picture as Pedro and Macrina walked off to play, “funny kids” he joked to Vanessa, and she just smiled, “where do they get these games?” she replied.

As the night drew on, Caleb took a quick shower, they had prayer and read a story to the kids. Then Caleb and Vanessa stayed up for about an hour reading in bed, before going to sleep.

The next thing Caleb knew he was driving late at night. The road was dark and he could hardly see anything. It was a country road, and slightly foggy. He was coming fast around the corner; he was in his Cruz. “I’ve got to get home, I’ve got to get home” he said to himself. For some reason he was really frantic to get home. Between the fog, the rain, and the darkness of the night he could hardly see. Even with the high beams on he just couldn’t seem to get a good view of what was before him. Nevertheless, this impulse, this drive, this compulsion drew him on. He pressed his foot against the gas, it was as if he just knew something bad would happen if he didn’t get…

Just then, he could barely see through the blurriness of the rainstorm, and his wet window, what looked like a woman. He tried to stop, to slam on the brakes, slamming them so hard that he fell forward and hit his face on the steering wheel. It was no use, he heard the loud smack, and then dull thud as his car collided with the woman. Her face slammed into the front of the car, and like a doll, her body flew up, hitting the windshield of the car, breaking and cracking it. Momentum threw her back down though as the car came to a screeching halt. Finally, a splashing and cracking could be heard as her limp body slammed into the asphalt, right in a puddle from the heavy rain. With that she had disappeared from his view.

Caleb felt numb, as the rain poured in through the broken glass of his windshield, he sat there stupefied. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. He wanted to get out, to look, he wanted to see if maybe by some miracle the poor woman had lived, if there was anything he could do. His heart welled up within him, but his legs and arms felt paralyzed. He wanted so desperately to move, but couldn’t seem to work up the strength. It was as if the trauma held him, like a stone sitting upon his chest.

Finally, Caleb gathered his wits about him. “I’ve got to… I don’t know, but…” he was saying to himself as he threw off the seatbelt and turned to open his door. In that moment, he looked through the window and his heart skipped a beat as, even through the darkness of the night, he could see the bloodied face, grinning with blood-soaked teeth, looking with wide blue eyes. She stood there, laughing; hair all disheveled, with broken limbs hanging down, it was the woman he had just plowed into in his car, but she was now bearing down on him with deliberate menace. One of her eyes bulged out and looked sideways. Soaked from the rain and covered in her own blood, she just laughed and grinned. Caleb’s head shot back in surprise, as he looked at her, he could see that her movements were like those of some sort of hell-borne puppet from the fourth circle of Dante’s Inferno, as she lifted up her broken arm, her head tilted at a disturbing angle from her neck having snapped. Her freshly broken arm twitched up, and flung forward towards Caleb; her wrist was so badly broken that her hand was turned completely opposite, so that it looked as though she had two left hands, and her broken fingers smacked against his window.

Caleb startled awake and sat up in bed with a snort and grunt. He was drenched in sweat, and looking around the room frantically. For just a split second he thought he could see the very woman from his dream, standing beside his bed, with the same distorted grin. However, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness there was nothing there. Vanessa was awakened by his sudden start, “Caleb, my love,” she began, putting a hand on his strong chest, “Are you okay?” He smiled and rubbed his eyes. His head was throbbing, “Yeah… yes,” he groggily replied to her, softly laughing, “just a bad dream. It was so weird though.” He got up, and walked to the bathroom in their master bedroom, washed his face, and looked in the mirror. When he walked out of the bathroom, he looked into the door way, and this time he was certain that there was a girl in his doorway, it was Macrina, “Daddy,” she gently whined out, “Can you come tuck me in?” He smiled, took her hand, and tucked her back into her bed. Kissed her on the forehead and said, “I love you Pequina” before closing the door. As he trudged back to his bedroom he felt breathing on the back of his neck. Turned around, seeing nothing he looked up and said to himself, “Why is the vent giving off cold air this time of… whatever.” He went back to bed, and he and Vanessa slept soundly for the rest of the night. He had awoken at 3AM.

The following morning the family piled into Vanessa’s Mini-van, drove to mass. And on the way home they ate breakfast at Andrew’s Diner on Broadway. They liked to go there for breakfast after mass because Pedro and Macrina could order milkshakes and they could discuss the liturgy together. Caleb treasured those times with his family. They went home, Pedro and Caleb took Stella for a short walk in the rain, while Vanessa and Macrina picked out what they would wear at the housewarming party for the Holdens.

Stay tuned for Chapter 3...

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About the Creator

Kevin J.N. Hughes

Theologian, Mystic, Philosopher

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