Level Zero by Dan McDowell (debian ebook reader .txt) 📗

dark corner ahead, a pair of yellow eyes glowed. The creep lunged toward him. He cursed under his breath.

Not again.

“What’s your deal with me, man? I’m just here to do a job. I didn’t do nothin’ to bother you.”

“Forget it,” Joe said. “Let me pour this on you. It’ll make you right as rain. You know, I think you’re alright. Your story might even make ‘honorable mention’ up top on Level Seven, Surprise and Scare. Let’s dig up your wife’s parakeet and dog, give ‘em to Chris, and have him stuff ‘em and put ‘em on the floor for inspiration. Taxidermy and Texas go well together, don’t they? If you’re lucky, I might even pump your useless behind up with formaldehyde and stick you in a glass case, too.”

Livewire studied the cuts on his arms, watching them heal as Joe poured a clear liquid over them. Creeper Joe grinned as he stared at Livewire.

“That’s better, isn’t it?”

“No, no… This ain’t right. I ain’t got no business messin’ around here.”

“Take a swill while you’re at it,” Joe said. “I’m sure you’ll see something worthwhile…”

“Nope,” Livewire said. “What’s going on here?” He tried to stand up and Joe knocked him back to the floor.

“Healing water…” Joe said. “Isn’t that what you called it?”

I don’t believe this.

“Say what?”

“Spring of Life. You give to Oak Hollow. It gives back to those it deems worthy.”

“Say no more.”

I’ve got to stay in good graces with this guy. I bet I can get on more comfortable terms treatin’ him better than he deserves. The freak’s never had a support structure a day in his life. There’s somethin’ strange about him. Some kind of aura… I don’t know.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

TODD ADAMS looked into Julie’s eyes as his next therapy session went by at a snail’s pace. The rearrangement to the room since their previous session unsettled him.

Find a distraction. The time will go by faster. She’s an airhead. Did she change the order of her degrees on the wall? The doctorate used to be on the top.

She continued her discourse, “The thing about the manic and the depressive is that they are day and night with each other. Yin and Yang. Sometimes, I’ll see a patient, and they’ll be a lovely spring lily, standing out amongst a field of others that are all the same. The next time I see them, they’re withered away, flat, and out of the frame while the others grow and blossom. Fast forward another session later, and I see an entire field… dark and charred, no lilies in sight, and then the strangest thing happens… a fire poppy grows amidst a field of ash.”

Why do you have to be so good looking? Your analogies could use some work, though…

Todd smiled. “And what’s that to me? Why do you feel the urge to tell me this?”

“I think you have the potential to be all of them. You’ve got to watch yourself so you can sense when the seasons are changing. Most folks bob up and down near the middle, about like a metronome, up, down, up, down. Being cyclical in our mood isn’t a foreign concept. For others, the cycle is more chaotic, up, up, up, up, down, down, down, down, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Then just when you’re expecting to go back up again and find a normalcy in your cycle, you get a burst of up or down so high or low, you feel you’re going to fly right off the rails.”

So deep. This talk is lib…erating.

“Todd, look at me. Where’s your head? There are solutions buried deep within you. You’re already helping by talking to me and taking the medication. Now you’ve just got to connect the dots with where your mood is. Neutralize the worst parts of yourself when you’re out of sorts and capitalize on the very best of yourself when you’re on top of your game.” She adjusted herself across from one side of the office chair to the other and sighed. “Listen, I’m not here to sugar-coat anything. I’m here to help you improve your life.”

Todd smirked. He flung a magazine off the table into the floor, knocking over Julie’s glass of water.

“Todd, what’s going on?”

“And just like that, she explains why the world spins at an angle… when we all knew that already. Look, I appreciate what you’re saying and you trying to help me pull it together. The thing is, I’m dealing with something worse than a little mania here, Julie. It’s a fu… it’s a nightmare.”

“Say it how you feel it. You don’t have to censor yourself around me. Let out that pinned up emotion. This is a safe-haven.”

I can’t say it how I feel it. Are you kidding me? Self-control. Good man. Good man.

“How I feel it? Okay, then. I think you’re beautiful. I think this relationship could lead me to trouble. I think that I’m capable of a lot of things I want to be capable of, and even more that I don’t. What’s the point? How do you fix that? I take my medication. I do my exercise. I even went out like you told me the other night and met somebody. Just as luck would have it, she’s a soon to be divorcee with a chip on her shoulder the size of Alaska. So… what the hell do I do with that? You got a solution for me?” Todd’s voice rose to an excessive yell, “Does your little DSM tell you how to deal with this shit?” He flipped the end table over and stood up, towering over Julie.

Julie reached her hand out and grabbed his arm. “I don’t appreciate the damage to my office, Todd. We’ll get to that later. It’s okay. I’m here to help you.”

Todd’s mind raced away, and he glimpsed into the past through another man’s eyes.

A middle-aged man stood in the middle of a pasture, staring down at him. He was soft-spoken.