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    Almost the Fifth
    Almost the Fifth
    Almost the Fifth
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    Almost the Fifth

    By D. D. Riessen

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Ben has a broken nose and the doctors suspect that he has a concussion. Ben has no idea how that happened, but has proof that the subsequent hallucinations are real. A gift from Coyote puts his life in grave danger but, fortunately he has Vargo and Pretty to help him along.
    Attempting to understand the cause of his predicament, Ben discovers a whole new set of circumstances that force him to conclude that his reality is not normal. Half of his life is believable, the other, not so much. A cyclops eye can never die? Who knew? Think of the knowledge it could convey if only it could communicate, which it can to it's current owner, Vargo, who is attempting to save Ben's life while others are willing to kill to get the gift Ben receives from an Indian named Coyote. There is a rush to get into the fifth dimension and become immortal. People will go to great lengths to get ahead. Unbelievable? Of course. Read on.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherD. D. Riessen
    Release dateMar 31, 2019
    ISBN9780463537770
    Almost the Fifth
    Author

    D. D. Riessen

    Dave's work revels with the fanciful, ponders the inscrutable and enigmatic, and examines the human character.

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      Book preview

      Almost the Fifth - D. D. Riessen

      Chapter 1

      I remember, plywood. I would like to include a better description of the other things around me at the time, but that was all I could see. For some reason I was holding a four-foot by eight-foot sheet of plywood and couldn’t see above or around. Why I was holding it is still a mystery. But that might help explain the broken nose and concussion. They say that’s why I fade in and out.

      That’s what they call it. For me, it’s more like hallucinating, people appearing out of nowhere. But they’re real. I can prove it…,

      I was skating on a blacktop road on the secluded, back side of the lake, a beginner on rollerblades and was doing OK getting up to speed when somebody came up behind me and shoved me off of the road. I stumbled down the bank, through the rocks and sand and stopped just short of the water. By the time I looked up, all I could see was two other skaters racing away, laughing.

      Sitting on a rock close to the shoreline, I removed my skates and discovered that one of them had a broken axel. While wondering if I could somehow fix it enough to get me home, this foot appears in my peripheral vision, wearing a moccasin.

      Looking up, if you think of any western movie or photograph of a wise, old American Indian, this is the man. I’m speechless. Where did this guy come from? He might have already been standing there when I came crashing through so, while trying to avoid the rocks, I might not have noticed. In any case, I never heard any approaching footsteps after I came to a stop.

      He motioned for me to hand him a skate and I’m reluctant to do so. I don’t know why I would feel that way. They’re already worthless. I’ll have to buy new ones. But I was curious to see what he what he was going to do with them. You can’t fix the axel without the tools and, from what I could see, all he had was a knife attached to his belt. I didn’t think the two feathers tied to some kind of strap in his long, graying hair would help either.

      After examining the first skate, he motioned for the other. Neither of us has spoken. Examining it, he spun the wheel several times, both directions, and studied the axel. Then, without any warning, threw them out into the lake.

      I was stunned. I started to stand but, pulling out his knife, he motioned for me to remain sitting and drew the letters, IGS, into the sand, removed one of the feathers from his headband, handed it to me and, using his forefinger, motioned for one of something. While I was studying the feather and wondering about the letters, he stepped out of my view.

      Standing to get a better look, he is gone. There is scattered brush along the shoreline here and there, but no place where a person could hide or even make it that far before I looked up. The beach is reasonably flat. I waved the feather through his vacated space, thinking that he might pop in again. I did deserve some kind of explanation, didn’t I?

      So, you can see my dilemma. Do I report this? If I tell the doctors what happened, they’re going to put me away. Report the assault? There are no witnesses and I don’t have any description of the attackers, nor do I have the skates to prove my point. And if I mention anything about a bare-chested Indian giving me this feather, which is illegal for me to have because it’s a hawk’s feather and I have no Indian blood in me, they will lock me up until they know a little bit more about me.

      Fortunately, the incident didn’t end there. I had three clues, IGS, the feather and one of something. I picked my way across the rocks back up to the road. It was going to be a long walk home and the sun was high in the sky. I had time to think about things…,

      Indian gives...., what? Indian gives, skates? Except he didn’t. He took them. Should be ITS. Tossed them out into the lake. Why’d he do that?

      Indian gave, give, giver. Indian giver. Except he didn’t. He took my skates, which I paid for and tossed them into the lake. Why?

      Indian game…, glad. Indian gets something. Indian gimmick sucks.

      Where did he go? Maybe ‘I’ means inconceivable. How did he disappear like that? Inconceivably good shit! I get shaft. What the hell! It’s not my imagination. It happened! IGS can be anything. Impossible gripping scenario.

      Threw my skates into the lake. Why? One finger…, did he flip me off? Should have punched him. Mr. Gullible. That’s me. Thought he was doing a trick.

      Walking along, I must’ve stumbled onto some combination of words that worked because there he was again, walking beside me. He showed me these new skates, removed his moccasins and put them on.

      OK. I’m amused. This mysterious, old man on rollerblades? I have to watch. What’s he going to do?

      The lake has lots of fingers where, standing at any place around the perimeter, another person can be out of view. When he disappeared around the first bend, my expectation of seeing him again in the next possible spot, was about a minute, maybe a little less. But he reappeared over there mere seconds later. It should have taken much longer. It was at least a hundred yards around that cove. From there, he waved and, seconds later, stood in front of me.

      He swapped the skates for his moccasins and while I was studying the quality of the soft leather and how easily the wheels spun, not wanting to stop, why am I not surprised, he disappeared. By the way, my name is Ben.

      Chapter 2

      Hi. I’m Vargo. A lot of things are happening right now and I don’t have much time to catch you up, so I’ll make it quick. First off, don’t believe everything Ben says because, well…, he doesn’t have the whole picture. He calls it hallucinating. That, too. Secondly, time is not what it seems. The reason for that is because I’m with Pretty.

      Oh. You don’t know about Pretty, the eye of a cyclops that lived a couple of thousand years ago? They, the intruders on her island, thought they killed her. In reality, they did. But the eye of a cyclops lives on forever and, don’t ask me how, drifts through time. I tag along. We’re best friends forever, so to speak.

      The problem is that she doesn’t know what time is. I can get her accuracy down to a day or two but, since she doesn’t know anything about time at all, she sometimes makes a crude, unpredictable landing. By that, I mean that, on occasion, we land after an event instead of before, other times just the opposite. How do we do that? Let me know if you find out. What do I mean about landing? Working on answering that.

      Since the day she went missing, I’ve been searching everywhere to find her. And then I was told by unreliable sources, several of them, that Pretty was being kept in the Museum of Unnatural History. Where else would you keep a cyclops eye if not in the Museum of Unnatural History? Duh.

      I visited the Museum, thinking that they’d have her on display, but they didn’t. Very disappointing. Not finding her in any of the

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