Two Strokes of a Pen

Something terrible has happened. I think I killed five people. Either that, or I'm going insane. It may be a coincidence, but it doesn't feel like it. It feels like I killed them with two strokes of a pen.

Dr. Lao says that's impossible. You can't kill someone by drawing an X though their name. She tried to put it delicately that I'm delusional. Dr. Lao is the most delicate of women, all dark, soulful eyes and tiny bones, like a bird's.

I've never seen such heart-breakingly-beautiful bones. I could write a poem about her clavicle, but she's married and she doesn't care about me except as a patient. I know enough about psychology to understand that what I feel for her isn't real love but something called transference. Still, she has a lovely clavicle.

When I first told her my story, Dr. Lao gave me a reassuring look and said I was confused. It was a look that psychiatrists probably practice in the bathroom mirror. It's meant to be accepting and encouraging, no matter what kind of crazy crap someone has told them.

"You're making connections between events that are unconnected," she said, looking at me over her steel-rimmed glasses with that professional reassuring gaze. "That's the way the brain works. It's called apophenia, or patternicity. Our brains are always trying to make sense of things, to connect the dots, if you will, but sometimes things just happen randomly and there is no connection but the brain insists there is."

That was last week. Today, I was back for round two.

A little fountain bubbled over smooth black pebbles on the low table between the chair where she sat and the brown leather couch where I reclined. Dr. Lao is not a Freudian, but she has a couch in her office for people who feel that it's not a real visit to a psychiatrist unless they're lying down.

"Five people died. Five people I went to college with. I drew a black X through their names in the alumni magazine because I was ticked off at them and they died," I said.

Dr. Lao pursed her lips. (Ah, those lips! They were pink and plump, like peony blossoms.) She said, "Look, Richard, you're what? Fifty-five? You're at the age where your peers are starting to die of what my husband calls the Big Three: cancer, heart attack, and stroke. It's very sad, but it happens. There's nothing supernatural about it."

Dr. Lao's husband was a cardiologist. She had a picture of him on her desk. He looked about thirty-five. I wondered if he'd be so blasé about the Big Three when he got to be my age.

"Tell me what happened again," she said, glancing at the discrete little antique silver clock on the table where the fountain bubbled. We had thirty minutes left, plenty of time.

So, I went through it again.

Stephen Pierce was the first. Yes, that Stephen Pierce, the novelist. He'd already had a book published during our freshman year of college. It was about a love triangle at a fancy-pants boarding school, like the one he'd gone to. Everybody made a big deal about how wonderful and talented he was, but I thought he was a smug jerk.

You see, I was going to be a famous writer. Yes, me, Richard Hinton, who now runs a chain of auto-parts stores established by his late father. Whoop-dee-do, as we used to say when we were kids.

I wrote a book that I was sure was going to be a best seller, a spy thriller set in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It was rejected by four different publishers. My second novel, a science fiction story about a society run by cruel robots, similarly bombed. Thanks for submitting. Not what we're looking for at the present time. Blah blah blah.

Unlike mine, Stephen Pierce's writing career took off like a rocket. Bestseller after bestseller. He could probably get his grocery list published to riotous acclaim, the smug bastard. When I read in the alumni magazine that he'd won yet another award something snapped.

I took up a back ballpoint pen and drew a big X through his name. Take that, big shot!

Three weeks later, he was found dead in a hotel room in Antwerp, where he'd been researching yet another book. It was a heart attack. No more glowing New York Times book reviews for old Stevie.

I didn't think anything of it, other than a small, mean thrill of satisfaction. I didn't think anything of the next one, either. That was my old girlfriend, Suzanne Farley. I'd had high hopes for seeing her at our class reunion and rekindling our relationship, but when she showed up trailing a husband and three children she barely acknowledged me.

Suzanne and I had spent hours together when we were in school, crammed into her twin bed in the apartment she shared with two other girls, staring wordlessly into each other's eyes.

Now all she gave me was a disinterested, "Hi, Rich," before moving away to talk to someone else. When I read in the class notes section of the alumni magazine that she'd gotten a promotion at the TV network where she worked for creating some awful reality show about a family of dissolute, feuding carnival workers -- Carnies it's called, and of course it's a howling success -- I slashed a big black X through her name, too.

The next issue of the alumni magazine carried her obituary. Breast cancer. Donations to be made to the American Cancer Society.

Numbers three and four were two guys from Zeta Zeta Tau, a pair of dumb jocks who went on to become fabulously wealthy doing something on Wall Street. They'd made fun of me for the cape I used to wear freshman year. It was black and flowing, with a high collar. I thought it made me took dashing and romantic, like the highwayman in the poem by Alfred Noyes, but they made cracks about how I looked like a gay vampire. Count Fagula, they called me.

The two of them were into yachting. I read about how one of them, a big cretin named Nick "Buzzer" Soames, had a custom-built yacht that he called The Odyssey, of all things.

Buzzer Soames couldn't have told you who Homer was if you held a gun to his head, but he had the nerve to call his stupid boat The Odyssey.

It sank off Block Island, taking Buzzer and his pal, Marty Weissberger, who stuck a "kick-me" sign on my back at a frat party once, to a watery grave.

Did I cross out their names in the alumni magazine before they drowned? Need you ask?

Number five was my sophomore year roommate. By now, I was starting to have an uneasy suspicion that maybe I was causing my classmates to die by drawing Xs through their names. I tried not to think about it, but the thought was there. That's why what I did next fills me with horror. I shouldn't have done it, but I did.

The class notes mentioned that my former roommate Dan's oldest son had been accepted to join the class of 2018. I thought about what had happened between Dan and me, and felt the old, hot shame come bubbling up. Dan didn't want to room with me after sophomore year. I told him I'd been drunk and I hadn't meant anything by it, but he didn't want to room with me anymore. He didn't want to have anything to do with me.

I imagined Dan driving his son to school, and helping him move into his dorm room. I imagined him sitting him down and having a man-to-man talk with him, warning him to watch out for guys who got drunk and tried to climb into bed with him. This little imaginary vignette struck a bolt of fear and rage through me. X went my pen. Dan dropped dead of a stroke before his son was halfway through his first semester.

I finished recounting the litany of deaths and looked at Dr. Lao. She was gazing pensively at the little fountain, where water splashed endlessly over smooth, black pebbles.

She asked, "Did you bring it?"

I reached into my briefcase and drew out the latest edition of the alumni magazine, in which Richard Hinton was mentioned in the class notes as having opened yet another location of Hinton Auto Parts. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

There was a black ballpoint pen among the markers and hi-lighters in a cup on Dr. Lao's desk. I nodded at it and asked, "May I?"

She plucked it out and handed it to me, I found the article and drew an X through my name. My hands were shaking when I handed the pen back to her.

She asked how I felt, and I lied and said I felt fine. She said she was proud of me for taking a step toward disproving what she called my "odd idea." Then she gave me one of her professional, reassuring smiles. Our time was up. We'd talk more at my next appointment.

The chest pains started around midnight. They were deep and glassy and hurt like hell every time I took a breath. I thought, Oh, damn. I’ve gone and given myself a heart attack. Gripped by pain, I bent over in my La-Z-Boy recliner, giving myself a good view of my new Nikes that would never get scuffed and dirty because I was dying. I waited for the pain to radiate down my left arm and into my jaw, at which point I was pretty sure I’d be a goner. Being a goner seemed like something to be devoutly hoped for at that point, the pain was so bad, but then I belched and what felt like a merciless iron band around my chest loosened and I was able to breathe normally again. It was just heartburn from eating half a pepperoni pizza too fast.

I’m a pig when it comes to pepperoni pizza. I practically inhale it. A couple of Tums and I was fine. I didn’t think the magic would work on me, but I hadn’t been sure. Believe me, it had been a tense few minutes until the Tums did their work and the pain went away. You never know with magic, especially the kind that kills people. I have no talent for writing but it appears I have a talent of another kind, what they call a wild talent, for want of a better term. It would be a hell of a thing if I’d died before I really got rolling.

Now I got down to business, opening the alumni magazine from the University of Michigan that had played a prominent part in my visit with Dr. Lao earlier that day. I’d graduated from good old U of M, home of the Wolverines. As fate would have it, so had Benjamin Lao, husband of the lovely Emily Lao. He’d also gone to med school there. She’d told me so herself. Life is full of coincidences.

I idly hummed the Michigan fight song as I flipped through the pages. Hail to the victors valiant! Hail to the conquering heroes. Hail, hail to Michigan, the champions of the West! Well, looky here! On page one hundred and four there was a mention of Benjamin Lao opening a new office of his cardiology practice. I idly wondered, as I pulled the cap from my black pen and prepared to X out his name, how a cardiologist would feel about having a heart attack. Not too swell, I imagined. Or maybe he’d fall off his stupid snowboard and break his neck, or he’d get eaten by a shark. I didn’t really care. However he died, I’d be there to console the grieving widow. She has such a lovely clavicle, after all.

THE END

Bio: Ms. Hand is a former newspaper reporter and editor from New Jersey, which is exactly like it's portrayed on the television show Jersey Shore. On her first day as a reporter, she got to see what a guy looks like that was hit by a train. It was an eye-opener. She now writes speculative fiction. Her first novel, Rosina and the Travel Agency, about moody, rebellious teenage time travelers, is available as an eBook from Amazon.

E-mail: Jill Hand

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