Bizarre Travel Book, Volume I: Ten Plus One

Bizarre Travel Book

Ten Plus One

Volume 1

Robert C. Frink

REVISED EDITION

DEDICATED

To my family

for their patience,

and

The OUTCASTs

For their invaluable input.

Copyright © 2013 by Robert C. Frink

Bizarretravelbook.com

ISBN–13: 978–1493737901

ISBN–10: 1493737902

All rights reserved. No Part of this book may be reproduced

in any form without written permission from the publisher.

All characters and actions in these tales are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events, past, present, or future, is purely coincidental.

Contents

Short Story

Reflected

Broken Oak

Spot on the Window

Total Eclipse of Sanity

Viracocha Sunrise

Antebellum Rendezvous

Diet

Walk to the Exit

Dogs in Trees

Thief of Senses

War with the Cats

Excerpt from Chapter 31

The Second It All Changed

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Cover Work by

Babski Creative Studios

http://babskicreativestudios.com/

Editing by Jayne T. Wallace Literary Services

wallacejayne@hotmail.com

Reflected

In the beginning, I had no concept of what was.

Only later did I comprehend.

My first sensation was wet, warm, coppery– salty.

As I emerged from a mist, my vision focused.

A shadow moved to the left and disappeared.

In front of me a – counter – upon which are a variety of implements surrounded by the rich red substance that coats much of my vision.

Beyond is a tiled area.

My thoughts began to expand, some foreign – others, my own?

The substance – blood – is feeding my understanding, mixing bleary memories into my consciousness.

Is there a loud noise?

Pounding, pounding.

Where does it come from?

To my left. Yes, to my left, beyond the – door.

Yelling, yelling, pounding.

The door swings open.

A short woman in a uniform enters and looks at the floor.

She raises her hands to her face, screams and runs away.

***

Opening the door, a gum-smacking man stood back, surveying the scene.

He ran his hand through his short cropped grey hair and straightened the gold Homicide badge on a lanyard that flopped over the lapels of his wrinkled brown suit jacket.

Towering over him, and craning his head around was the tall, slim man in a snappy beige business uniform labeled ‘General Manager’.

Their eyes scanned the room, but focused on the floor.

Is it a suicide, Detective? General Manager asked.

Detective chewed his gum quietly for a moment.

If it’s not, somebody took great care to make it look like one.

He chewed a few more times, took a piece of paper out of his front pocket, wrapped the gum and put it in his pocket. The entry wound appears to be under the chin. He was probably standing, looking in the mirror when he did it. Lots of blood on the counter, and we would expect more on the mirror, but it looks absolutely clean. Did anyone else come in the room? Detective asked, as he turned to a short woman with grey-flecked black hair dressed in a cleaning smock, a name badge proclaiming ‘Gabriela Gomez’.

No, Mister Donato. English was not her native language and she struggled. I hear the bang from down the hall and come check. I open the door, then ran straight to the GM.

Thanks, Miss Gomez. How many people checked into to this room?

As far as I know, only the man, General Manager interjected. The room contains nothing to suggest otherwise.

Don’t know how you do it, Afonso. How do you always beat us to the scene? said a man wearing a white ‘Crime Scene’ jacket, pushing his way into the room.

Intuition, luck. You call it. You know, Luis, Portuguese time’s not Latin time, Detective said, adjusting his glasses for emphasis. Make sure you get me the report ASAP and help me understand why there’s no blood on the mirror.

***

I learned that part of me came from the man I saw briefly being carried from my room. Somehow, I had gained spotty pieces of his knowledge from the blood I absorbed through my surface. I could only imagine it was far from all of his intellect, but enough for me to begin reasoning about my own existence. It did not take long to realize that I was a captive. I could not move beyond my surface, which the Detective, Afonso Danato, called ‘mirror’.

Am I ‘mirror’, or something else within?

My reasoning is of no help.

I began to sense time, and the coming and going of people. Seldom did more than one person come to my room and never as they did in my first memories. They came staring into me, sometimes with clothes, other times not. They came in all sizes, shapes and colors. Some beautiful and blemish–free, most not.

Many spent a great deal of time gazing into me, doing this and that to parts of their bodies. When not staring into me, they sat on the white chair. Sometimes they got in the tiled area, shut the curtain and filled the room with steam. They had no shame, no modesty, my fledgling mind told me.

Some would visit for days then go, never to return again.

The only persistent visitor was Gabriela Gomez.

Most days, she came to spend time in the room tidying it up, replenishing the implements, and even wiping down my surface. She never gazed into me and seemed to be making every effort not to.

Did she see me when others did not?

Then, one day something changed. One of the visitors came to the room. She was young, attractive but distraught, crying, mumbling under her breath. She did not match the ‘happy’ or ‘distracted’ or ‘confident’ of most visitors. She stood crying and staring into me with penetrating looks, makeup streaking her face. She had an implement from which she extracted a small thin rectangle, a razor blade.

Frantically, she sliced into her wrists and forearms. The red substance I knew as blood was splattered on my surface and I had feelings I had not had since the first day. I felt more alive, more powerful. Yet other feelings slipped in – anger, fear, despair – each acknowledged like the expanding creep of the blood on the counter.

I discovered that I could absorb the blood from my surface, but not beyond it. I must have done this, without thought, the first day. That must be why Afonso Danato asked about the lack of blood on my surface – ‘mirror’.

As the girl flailed around the room, I noticed something I should have long ago. My reflection looked back at me from a mirror mounted on the door. The instant I acknowledged it, I was in it, looking back into the room from another angle. I could see the counter and the large mirror that was my first home. To my left, the woman had ripped down the curtain, flinging blood onto every surface as she plopped down in the – tub. She turned on water, which ran steaming from the faucet, filling the enclosure. One arm floated in the water, turning it red, as the other languished outside the tub dripping blood on the floor.

I hungered for the blood, but could not reach it.

This time, only Luis came, and when he left, others, lettered EMT, came for the body and the girl was taken away.

The next day Gabriela came, replenished the implements, wiped down the room and my first home. She placed a white flower on the corner of the counter and dropped two tiny pieces of something – rice, in an awkward corner on the floor. From my new position on the door, I noticed that when it was open, I could see a long narrow mirror across a small hallway, which revealed another much larger room. The space felt open, airy, less confined. The feeling of being captive slipped from my mind.

Then a flicker of light drew my attention to a large mirror over another counter – dresser. I willed myself into it, using the hall mirror to angle into it. I did not need blood to move. I only needed to think.

My world expanded, with my new home giving me a completely different perspective on everything. People came and went often. More than one person was present at a time. They acted different here. They interacted with each other and I learned new and interesting things about – humans. Much centered on what they called the ‘bed’. It was used for many things, including long periods of time when not much happened.

I began to understand day and night, noticing the patterns of the people, and the light outside the opening to my left.

Again Gabriela was the only one to return consistently. When she did, her actions were similar to those in the other room but more varied, especially when she sat on the bed and watched the box of pictures and talking.

One day as she sat, I listened with her. … Leopard suspected of eating fifteen people in Nepal. Dr. Masalabar Sambarunu, an ecologist at the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation in Kathmandu, stated that leopards usually thrive on wild prey. However, once they have feasted on human flesh, which contains more salt than animal blood, they prefer human flesh over animal…

Gabriela looked at her watch, clicked off the box and slowly got up off the corner of the bed. She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye and her behavior abruptly changed.

She went to the hall mirror and made a mark with her finger in the lower right corner. She did the same to the one on the bathroom door. Then she left as quickly as she could.

Suspicious at what she had done, I tried to jump back to my original home. I could not.

I missed the secure feeling of home, but I could not will myself there. I was getting hungry. There was no blood.

I felt weak, vulnerable.

Was it the lack of sustenance, or was it something else?

An opportunity to sate my hunger presented itself when two people, a man and a woman came back late at night, arguing. The man stood in front of me, glaring deeply into the mirror. With much effort, I penetrated his gaze and looked into his mind. He was worried about the scene he had caused in the – bar, downstairs. He feared the police had been called.

I was amazed by the feeling and how open his mind was. Not only could I tap his knowledge, but I felt in control of his actions.

The woman came up, yelling and started slapping him. I willed him to slap her back, bloodying her lip and nose, which sprayed my surface.

I sucked it up quickly and willed him to produce more as their discussion intensified. Soon he lost all control and began banging her face and head on the mirror. Each blow released more blood that I devoured.

One spot in particular opened up with blood, oozing steadily. I directed him to sit her in a chair, pulling it alongside the dresser, so that he could lay her head in direct contact with my surface.

The man then paced the room, mumbling, wringing his hands and pouting.

With little effort, all I had to do was slurp and the blood flowed freely. I was well satiated when her pale body slid from the chair to the floor.

Startled, the man ran over to her yelling, What have I done? Oh my God! I’ve killed her! My wife and family will be ruined.

He opened his suitcase and got out a pistol, much like the one I had briefly seen under Afonso Danato’s jacket and in a clear plastic bag during the cleanup of the first body. He pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger, his hand jerking in the process. The result was not the death he wished for, but a loud noise which my memory connected to my birth.

My control over him was erratic. I got him to raise the gun, moving him closer to me and tried again, but missed. I concentrated, trying to gain control, but soon realized that, without his gaze into me, I could scarcely influence him.

Pounding and yelling came from the door.

Police! Open up!

More pounding. Then the door swung open.

The man spun around with the gun in his hand, and the policeman fired two shots. Blood splattered on the wall and the man fell to the ground.

It wasn’t long before Afonso Danato showed up, followed by Luis.

Isn’t this the same room as that gunshot suicide a few weeks back? Luis’s words danced in slurry of Cuban-English.

Yeah. Not so sure that was a suicide. I think there may have been someone else in the room who set it up to look that way. Reminds me. You still haven’t told me why there was no blood on the mirror, Afonso said examining the dresser. Maybe you can explain to me how this dresser is dripping with blood. There’s hair stuck on the mirror, but no blood on the mirror, or at the edge near the surface of the dresser.

That’s not the strangest thing here, Luis said, as he lifted the woman on the floor. This woman appears to have been drained of her blood, and the amount on the dresser doesn’t begin to account for the absence.

After a while, EMTs came in and removed the body of the woman and the man. All yours, they said as they departed.

Now I remember. Seems this room has had more than its share of bad luck. You know, this room had another suicide in here a week ago. Luis said.

Really? Afonso adjusted his glasses as he moved his hand to his chin.

Some depressed chick sapped herself in a steaming tub of hot water. The room is definitely not right. Management’s certainly got the jitters; they’re shutting down this section of the hotel for ‘remodeling’.

There has to be something we are missing, Afonso shined his small flashlight onto the dresser. He caught a reflection on the hallway mirror and went over to inspect it. Come here. What does this look like to you? he said, pointing the light toward the impression on the corner of the mirror.

It looks like some kind of south of the border mumbo jumbo to me. There’s a lot of that around here, Luis said.

You know it. I got cousins into it.

A soft knock on the door. They both turned to see Gabriela Gomez.

You want for me to clean now? She asked.

Sure. Come on in. The bodies are gone. Sorry you always get stuck cleaning up somebody else’s mess, Afonso said as he patted her on the shoulder.

No problems, she said as she moved to open the sliding glass door that looked out to the broad sandy beach and the ocean beyond.

When she passed the mirror, she mumbled. "Que está assistindo, é mal."

What did you say? ‘It is watching. It is evil’? Afonso said.

Is true. It’s here watching. Bad spirit.

I thought you were Cuban, but that was Portuguese, right?

Me papa, Cubano. Mama, Brasilian.

Just the right combo for the only Portuguese detective on the force, Luis said.

Evil grow stronger, Gabriela said, as she warily scanned the room. Must stop before out of control. It hide in shadows beyond our sight. I sense it hiding. First, it only watch. Now it act. It’s stuck for now by the power of the symbols you were looking at when I came in. It can not pass the sigil.

What in the devil are you talking about? Luis said, easing toward the door. Sounds like it’s time for me to get back to the lab. He went straight out the door, not even looking back.

Miss or Mrs.? Afonso asked.

Mrs.

"Well, Mrs. Gabriela Gomez, what must be