“Hey, E, you’re into that weird stuff, right?” He didn’t use the word ‘stuff,’ but that was the kind of fellow he was.<\/p>\n
Oh, I could argue the point, because there was a lot of “weird stuff” I certainly wasn’t into, but this was before the internet was quite as pervasive, and for what Jonath meant it was probably something I could at least give an opinion on, even if it was only, “That’s some weird stuff.”\u00a0 And I wouldn’t use the word ‘stuff,’ either.<\/p>\n
Jonath pulled me over to look at his computer screen.\u00a0 “What do you make of that?”<\/p>\n
It took a moment for me to make sense of the sight.\u00a0 First, it wasn’t porn, which was what Jonath was normally using his screen to view.\u00a0 The lack of bare flesh was its own distraction.\u00a0 It was a picture of a couple of everyday normal guys, one standing in front of a doorway, the other in front of a piece of furniture I couldn’t be bothered to give a name to…okay, the word escaped me for a moment, but it was some kind of cabinet.\u00a0 The kind of picture with very little interest to people who aren’t somehow related, kind of like a good deal of the credits to a movie.<\/p>\n
Then I caught the weird stuff.<\/p>\n
The gentleman on the left, in the doorway, seemed to fade out, and the gentleman on the right, you could see his hand through the one on the left.<\/p>\n
“Overexposure?” I asked.\u00a0 “One of those photography terms.”\u00a0 It kept my attention.<\/p>\n
“Digital.\u00a0 None of the other photos show it, nothing weird on the lens.”\u00a0 He shrugged.\u00a0 “These were photos I took on the trip to see my family. What do you\u00a0 make of it?”<\/p>\n
“That was what, four months ago?”<\/p>\n
“Eh, I forgot about downloading them until Mom nagged,” he shrugged.\u00a0 “But that’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”<\/p>\n
“Yeah.\u00a0 That’s some weird stuff.”<\/p>\n
I went and sat back on the bed, going back to my comics.\u00a0 To make conversation, I asked, “Where was that taken?”<\/p>\n
“Oh, that’s my mom’s new place.\u00a0 It’s huge, and really kind of weird.\u00a0 Lady lives there, buries her pets in the yard, wanders up at night chanting and stuff.\u00a0\u00a0 Real Stephen King, what was it?\u00a0 Pet Seminary?”<\/p>\n
“Cemetary, I think.\u00a0 I don’t read a lot of horror,” I lied, trying not to laugh at the idea of a place pets went to become priests.\u00a0 I stood up and went back over to behind Jonath’s chair.\u00a0 “You have any other pictures of the place?”<\/p>\n
“Oh, sure, here’s the grave in the front yard.\u00a0 Here’s one in the back.”\u00a0 He shifted through a few other photos.\u00a0 “Here’s this ancient telephone.\u00a0 Still works,” he showed me a couple of other photos, some of his family.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask a lot of questions, but finally, just shrugged.\u00a0 “That’s a restless place.\u00a0 Things aren’t being left to their regular entropy.”<\/p>\n
“We have replaced their regular entropy with new Folger’s crystals?”<\/p>\n
“Well,” I considered it, “the idea of spiritual caffeine is an amusing one,” I admitted.<\/p>\n
“Huh,” he grunted.\u00a0 “Weird stuff, right.”<\/p>\n
There are thoughts that open portals, because with most people (maybe not Jonath) thoughts lead to actions on both a physical and mental level.\u00a0\u00a0 When you make a decision, it is an action, if only of will.<\/p>\n
“Your mom doesn’t live in the state, does she?”\u00a0 That was an act of will, too.<\/p>\n
“Uh, no.”<\/p>\n
I swore silently.\u00a0 I didn’t use the word, “Stuff,” either.\u00a0 This was my theory as to why wizards weren’t pictured reading newspapers.\u00a0 With great power and all that.\u00a0 Really, it’s true of any specialist, although at least I wasn’t the kind of doctor who got cornered at parties to look at someone’s rashes.\u00a0 (Well, once, and it led to the term “spackle demons,” so it was kind of a story to be told, but not relevant.)\u00a0 How far did my responsibility cover?\u00a0 Did I have some kind of territory?\u00a0\u00a0 It’s not like I got some kind of per diem to pit my will against the Bumps in derNite.<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s because my rule of thumb is that if you ask “Is this somebody else’s problem?” it is officially a moral dilemma.<\/p>\n
I went back to my comic books.\u00a0\u00a0 Jonath moved back in with his mom when he couldn’t complete the school year.\u00a0 I’ve not heard from him since.<\/p>\n
[postnote: Thanks to D. Thornton for the bones.]<\/eM><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [It was the] kind of picture with very little interest to people who aren’t somehow related, kind of like a good deal of the credits to a movie. Then I caught the weird stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-five"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}