To Be Young Again

Jacob Reedy had been tending Grangie’s bar for well over ten years. He had inherited the bar from a family friend who had, for lack of better words, got old and moved to Florida for retirement. He was sick of the Sedona weather, and so offered the bar to Jacob at a discounted price. Jacob, of course, had jumped on the offer right away, and so had established permanent residence and local fame as the best – and only – bartender of Sedona.

Jacob prided himself on running the cleanest bar around. Despite whatever crowd he was catering to, Jacob was the one who opened the bar, served the drinks, cooked the food, called the taxis, and closed it at night. And, unfortunately, it was this attention to detail that had lost him his wife and his only daughter. He never could understand the logic behind the note that his wife had left him not six months ago, but she moved out and across town. Reminiscing, he could see how much that would suck – she couldn’t even drink the problems away, not without seeing him.

It was a surprise then, when his ex-wife walked into his bar that Monday night, frazzled, frustrated, and looking at Jacob, appearing to have the whole world set right again. He was older, and relatively content with no sex life – had not even begun looking at new, potential mates. He always figured that his ex was the woman of his dreams – and since he blew it, he might as well have been gay from that point on.

“Jake!” She approached the bar with the fury of a thousand hungry pumas on the brink of becoming herbivores. “Have you seen Dina?”

“No, she was with you this weekend. We agreed on that ages ago – I couldn’t get anyone to watch the bar before closing.”

“Are you on crack?” His ex-wife’s eyes began to bug out of her head. “She called me on Friday from your house and told me she would be with you for the weekend! She was supposed to be home today, and I haven’t seen her at all. Her phone is off and her teachers said she skipped school all day today.”

“Didn’t they call you?”

“No – they’re supposed to call you.”

“My phone wire got chewed through by one of those monkeys on Friday night.” Jake said. He pulled one of the waitresses from her current expedition. “Finish what you’re doing, then watch the bar. We’ve got a little bit of an emergency here.” Without even waiting for the waitress’ assent to his order, Jake opened the bar door and strode out, ex-wife on his arm like a trophy.

“I didn’t even worry about her until today…but Jake, she’s fifteen! Where could she possibly be?”

“She’s with you more than she’s with me.” Jacob Reedy pointed out to the frazzled woman. “I couldn’t name more than two of her friends before we got divorced. You know how it is now.”

“I think we need to call the police.” Anna asserted to her ex-husband. The cooler night had not eased her discontent, and she was pacing. Jake was feeling that familiar burning sensation in the pit of his stomach – which occurred in place of imminent danger warning signals, and whenever he was around his ex. He had a feeling though, that this time, it was the former that called his attention.

“Have you called her friends yet?” Jake asked, making sure his ex-wife wasn’t simply delusional. He could remember a few times when she had freaked out and jumped to conclusions. Pushing bad memories aside, he awaited her response.

Most likely, she had run away to her fathers, called her mother, and then returned to a friend’s house to spend the weekend. She was old enough to realize that the parents no longer communicated about sleepovers more than necessary – and in some cases, with a little bit of persuasion on the part of the children, not at all. She was also intelligent enough to realize that she could get away with it – until Monday, at least. Now, she was in trouble.

Despite Jacob’s attempt to ease his own mind, we must inform the reader that Jacob was inaccurate – by a long shot. Unfortunately, what could only happen in his dreams: kidnapping, assault, dark rooms and scary people – was happening to his very own daughter. The wrong place at the wrong time led Jacob and Anna’s daughter, Dina, right into the hands of trouble. And until now – for she had spent Friday night and the following morning with friends –– no one, not even those friends, had realized her peril.

On the other side of town, in a dank basement of a relatively well kept, clean and inconspicuous colonial style house, a recently divorced man stood over the limp body of a girl-woman thing that had become his captured object. A volunteer emergency vehicle technician, the man had planned well in advance for his capture, although he had not been quite sure of his target until he had spotted the opportune opportunity that Friday afternoon. Alone, in an abandoned and narrow alleyway, he had spotted the girl walking and decided to take his chance.

Joseph Bisucria was not crazy, or insane. He had not recently lost his wife because she had witnessed him talking to god – she had left him for one of those simple, simple reasons. They had not had kids, so it was almost effortless for his wife to sit him down, and announce, “I’m leaving you.” Joseph had already known the answer to his next question, “For who?” The large, African American delivery guy that he had found lounging a little too close to the door on Saturday mornings whenever he had a package to deliver, and many weekdays, he was sure, for his wife had worked nights as a nurse at the local hospital.

His love life aside, we were making a point: Joseph Bisucria was not crazy or exceptionally insane. In fact, Joseph was simply over stressed and…well, not underpaid: he was at Green Tech. But he had been overstressed. And it was this overstressing that had driven him to the area in complex D, in the basement and behind the staff only door, behind the bookcase and into the safe, which had been unlocked; and had stumbled onto quite possibly the most important ‘switch’’ in the world.

The worst part was that it was not a secret. It wasn’t just a sparkling purple light switch inside a glass case inside a safe behind a bookcase through a staff only door in the basement of Complex D. Next to the bright purple switch was a sign:

WARNING: Breaking this glass and turning this switch will tear the veil between the world of us, and the world of everything that we didn’t want in ours. Please understand that this is a bad idea. Remove yourself and return to elsewhere immediately.

Joseph had thought it had been a joke. But, in his custodial role, he took some time to snoop around the various offices, and found tons and tons of documentation explaining and proving exactly what he had feared the most. The sign and the switch were not a joke. And it was then that he decided he must be prepared in case of the actual event.

Now he had not particularly thought that the switch would ever be…switched. But, he had a nagging feeling that once the monkeys were accidentally released, it might come back to haunt him. Being quite possibly one of the only people who knew about the danger, Joseph had immediately hatched a plan.

In the Green Tech emergency documents in the cupboard of the head of the department of unusual conditions’ office, it had been said numerous times that, in the case of a chance of the veil being torn apart, one should immediately for both personal and business precautions take shelter, for the invasion of centaurs was above and beyond all reason, feared. It had delved into a significant portion of myth and folklore, without ever really mentioning how the veil had gotten there in the first place, but had specifically mentioned that if a virgin was sacrificed to a centaur (or a dragon, it had mentioned those, also) the sacrifice-giver would receive a special blessing and perhaps protection. This, of course, was not ordained by the office or even suggested – it had been suggested that all women should immediately be kept inside and protected at all times. But Joseph had read in between the lines and therefore, found his way to salvation.

And so, after the monkey release, Joseph decided it would be in his best interest to kidnap a girl, keep her drugged so that she wouldn’t remember a thing, as a last chance safety measure. He had not been particularly kind to the thoughts and ideas of the various creatures that the handbook had mentioned, and he had also read that previous thoughts and intentions with regard to those mythical and unwanted creatures would influence one’s ability to survive in the new, merged world. The Green Tech handbook had taken it as a very real threat, and it had actually seemed odd to Joseph that the only protection against such an invasion was a switch in the basement of complex d, beyond a staff only door, behind a bookcase, and in a safe housed with broken mops, which by the way, as a member of the custodial staff, he had never known about.

And so, Joseph Bisucria stood over an unconscious teenage girl, wondering what the hell he had gotten himself into.

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