Depression by cmsix

Chapter 19

Ethel got the show on the road after that. The next hour and a half had me and the other men stepping and fetching, but it was for a good cause. You should have seen Jaycee's eyes light up when she came back and got a look at the bedroom furniture she'd be using.

Carolyn and Geneva stayed with Jaycee to help her get situated while Ethel, Wanda, and the men went back to the house. I hoped that supper was high on Ethel's list of things to do next.

"Jaycee, can you ride a horse, I asked, before they could get out of pocket.

"Sure, I haven't in a while but before I left for the army I loved riding," she said.

"Good, do you mind if I pick one out for you?"

"For me, what do you mean?" she asked.

"I'm sure that George intends four you to have one down here in my barn. It'll be handier in case you need it. I thought I'd go pick one and bring it down," I said.

"That's fine. I'm going to be a little busy for a while," she said, and I left, mostly to make sure I didn't get busy in this type of thing myself.

I took my own pickup up to George's house, since Jaycee's things were still in the Hum-V pickup. It was the first time I'd been in my truck since the discovery of the contents of my new garage. It felt familiar and comforting. It made me realize that things hadn't been very familiar since before my poker trip to Shreveport. Or at least they hadn't been after I got back.

My whole world had changed, starting with a barn that Bob built, for the fun of it. Who builds a barn for fun? No one. But Bob had. But had he really done it for fun?

Looking back, things started getting pretty unbelievable from the time my depression started. The depression was unbelievable itself for that matter. My life had turned into the old salesman's joke:

Six munths ago I couldn't even spell salesman, now I is one!

Six months ago I couldn't even spell depression, actually I could spell it but it hadn't been a part of my life. Then it showed up in my head and things went to shit, but not really. They just seemed to be going to shit at the time. In the long run, depression was the key to my new situation. My new, unreal life.

Anyone looking at it from a distance would say I'd walked through a pasture of cow shit and only had to stoop down and pick up a big gold nugget every now and then. I wasn't looking at it from that distance though and just now, alone in my pickup for the first time in a few days, I was able to distance myself from the day-to-day things that had been happening.

Previously I wouldn't have called myself an introspective type person. Basically, I went through life reacting to whatever came next. Planning wasn't high on my to do list.

I came to George and Ethel's drive and went past it. The short pickup ride had let me get a look at what had been happening to me and around me and I wasn't ready for that look to go away. I hadn't seen enough yet.

That was a disturbing thought itself. What was it about my old pickup that let me think clearly, if that was what I was doing? Suddenly, almost as if it came from something besides my own head, I got the urge to blow this ride off and go back to George's house and go inside.

"Cut that out, Goddammit, whoever you are - whatever you are, stop it," I screamed aloud.

The urge went away at once, almost violently, if that's possible. That urge had been the They fog trying to creep back into my head and for the first time I'd actually felt it coming. Before now, I'd known that fog was around me at times but I'd never distinctly felt it coming before.

What do you know, I'd caught They at it, caught them fucking with my head. Suddenly I could remember all the times they'd done it before. Hell, I could even remember back to when my depression started in the first place.

They had caused every damned bit of it. Anger flooded through me at once and ebbed almost as quickly. There'd been something else during that flash of anger though, and I'd felt it too. Even better, I'd felt exactly where it'd come from and it hadn't come from me.

It wasn't exactly a door in my mind that They came through, but that's a good analogy, or as close as I can come to explaining the unexplainable. Best of all, I knew I could shut it. I did, in fact it was the mental equivalent of slamming a door.

The fog was gone, completely, and it was good.

I was alone in my own head for the first time in a long time, but I didn't have time to gloat. Just this second I had to drive, of all things.

Apparently, They had been taking care of that mundane little task while the door'd been open and when I'd slammed it in their faces the chore of driving fell back to me.

Thankfully I hadn't been in any traffic, and there was a wide shoulder here, so I pulled over and stopped.

It's hard to explain what the door was but I didn't have any trouble examining it myself. Maybe my brain was putting it into a context that I could understand; almost certainly it was, since I knew there wasn't an actual door inside my skull, no matter how small.

There was a door though, and I could visualize the tiny doorknob. I could even see the old-timey keyhole. What the hell, I bent mentally for a peek through it. No joy there, nothing to see, but I could feel something through that virtual keyhole. I could feel They, and They wanted me to open the door again.

This was the happiest moment in my life, so far, because I had gained something that I treasured. Control - I'd recovered control of my life.

I'm not saying that They had done anything to harm me, not in the least, but control over what goes on in your own mind is what being a human is all about - at least that's what it's about to me. I had hold of control again, and to tell the truth, I didn't want to open the door for They.

My own mind played traitor to me then. As if I didn't really have the control I'd just been slobbering about, a question came into being and was on the loose inside my head before I could stop it, and straight through the keyhole it went.

"What'll ya give me?"

That tiny slip started something that had never happened on earth before, or not to my knowledge anyway. It started a conversation between an earthling - as in me - and a non-earthling - as in They. It's a damned good thing that They could speak English, sorta.

They were upset that I'd discovered the door and upset even more that I'd shut it. They had gone to considerable trouble to install the door and it was practically useless to them with it shut this way.

They were telling me more than They thought. First and foremost, They were telling me that They didn't know the first damned thing about trading horses. Here They were wanting to bargain for something and stupidly letting me know how important that something was to them.

Naturally, what they wanted didn't matter to me right now, but I let They keep going on about it for a few seconds, before I asked my question. I made sure I didn't let them know what was important to me.

"Why are you doing all this?" I asked.

Hopefully, They assumed that knowing why was important to me. In truth it didn't matter at all. I didn't care what they wanted; I cared about what they did. They could do things that no one on earth could and that was the understatement of all time. I wanted some control over what They actually did.

Sure, They had been nice to me so far, but as a greedy human, I wanted to insure they were nice to me in exactly the way I wanted them to be nice to me. If you've ever had someone buy you an expensive gift that just didn't appeal to you at all, you know what I mean. If They were going to go to the trouble of doing something for me, it might as well be something I wanted them to do.

At any rate, They apologized but could not tell me the reason for what they were doing. I was happy that They had finally spit that out. Now we had enumerated something they wanted and something I wanted; it meant that the bargaining was about to begin in earnest.

Even though They didn't tell me why they were doing what they were doing, They didn't mind telling me what they were doing, and what They could or couldn't do.

Ultimately, the list of things They could do was nearly infinite and the list of things They couldn't do was really only things that were more difficult for them. From my point of view, They could do those things if they had to; it was just a matter of too much trouble for the gain on their part.

Simple control over people was a given for them. Reading surface thoughts was as easy for them as sight was for me. They wouldn't tell me why the door into my head was different from what they normally did, and They wouldn't tell me why they wanted it open again so desperately. They did promise me everything but the moon if I'd open it again though.

"I want to know what effect this time traveling is having on the earth of here and now?" I asked.

"None."

That was a relief but it went against the grain of what I thought I understood about things. How could I go back in time, change a bunch of things that had happened or would have happened and have no effect on what was now?

I asked them about that, and They didn't want to tell me. Finally they explained that I wasn't going back into the past of this earth. It had been the past of this earth but it had diverged when I made my first trip. Now I was going back to another version of the past.

That was all I wanted to hear about that. In fact, I wondered why I'd asked in the first place. Even if I could have, I wasn't going to go back and shoot my own mother or father and that's as much of it as I wanted to think about.

In the end I agreed to open the door but I wouldn't agree not to ever close it again. Extracting a promise for them to let me stay clearheaded from now on was easier than I'd thought it would be, and apparently some of They had wanted me, the one with the doorway, to be left alone from the start.

When They pressed me on what else I wanted, I said I'd let them know later. I wasn't trying to be mysterious, I just couldn't think of anything right now. Hell, my poor brain was on overload. Besides, it was time for supper, or nearly so. And that's another thing, I didn't intend for my new position of power to be reduced to a three wishes deal.

With the door open again, I headed back to Ethel's table, hoping someone had done something about a meal. Constant two-way communication between me and They hadn't seemed like a good idea, and they hadn't wanted it either. Of course I knew they were listening at all times, so as I headed back, I sent them a thought.

"Drive."

They did. My hands were still on the wheel and my foot was on the gas pedal, but I didn't have to pay a bit of attention to where I was going. It was like an autopilot, but even better. With my new understanding of the situation, I realized they'd been doing a lot of this lately. At least now I was getting to enjoy it too.

Parking behind George and Ethel's house, I saw the Hum-V was here, so Jaycee must have been clued in about supper.

When I sat down beside her at the table, I could tell she'd had a shower since she finished moving in. She'd changed clothes, her hair had been washed, and she even smelled cleaner, not that she didn't smell fine earlier.

Meka, Tutsie, and everyone else was already seated and it was almost as if they'd been waiting for me to arrive. When I paid attention closely I knew they had been.

Trying out my new connection, I thought, "Cut that out," at They. Immediately Ethel let me know They had indeed cut it out.

"We's beginning to wonder if you'd fell off a cliff. Next time we're gonna start without ya," she said.

"I'm sorry, I should have been back in time. I guess I was dragging my feet," I said.

"I'll let it slide this time, but don't let it happen again," she said, with her voice sounding serious, but a big smile that let me know she was only teasing.

As usual, I didn't care if she teased me. When the big T-bone hit my plate and Jaycee passed the serving bowl with the cream potatoes, the teasing was forgiven.

Talking died down as mouths got full and the most common sound was of a knife, fork, or spoon hitting a plate. I happened to glance over at Tutsie, on the other side of Meka, and he was standing at his bowl with his mouth working a mile a minute, ingesting. His tail was wagging way over the speed limit too. Meka seemed like she couldn't decide whether to eat or watch Tutsie and laugh at him.