Woodbridge's

It should have been a typical evening… after running a few errands, I expected to come home, heat up some leftover pizza and watch television until bed time. Nothing special, nothing exciting. Just a dull, flavorless evening. Destiny, though, can have different plans, and I suppose I found myself on the butt end of fate that night. From the moment I walked into that store, I should have known something was awry. It’s not often that one gets to wonder just how markedly different their life would have been if they hadn’t desperately needed to pick up detergent on their way home from work one Wednesday.

Our local department store chain is called Woodbridge’s. It’s small and its selection is paltry, but it’s directly between my job and my apartment. The Target is almost ten minutes out of my way, and the Wal-Mart is awfully run down these days. So unless I need something fairly obscure, I always stop at Woodbridge’s. I’m quite familiar with it, which is probably why I could tell something was off from the moment I walked in. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the issue was, but it was definitely different. Maybe it was the lighting, or the smell of the place. I’m not sure. But it was off. I didn’t realize how far off until later.

The store was nearly abandoned that night. Now, this isn’t uncommon, especially on a weeknight (how, exactly, Woodbridge’s stays in business has always slightly confounded me), but it seemed exceptionally empty. Usually there’s a few stray shoppers, younger men, mostly, plodding over the dingy linoleum and looking pale under the buzzing fluorescent lights. But that night, I can’t remember seeing another soul between the front doors and the cleaning supplies. Every now and then, maybe, as I passed an aisle, a shadowy flash might skitter past, but I assumed it was just the tail end of a fellow shopper briskly moving in the opposite direction. I will admit that I didn’t really notice anything substantially odd at all until I picked my bottle of Gain off the shelf. There certainly had never been a stream running through the house wares department before.

I was dumbfounded, really. It was so nonsensical. But it was real. Only a few feet away from the fabric softeners and dryer sheets was a shallow brook dug into the white and blue Woodbridge’s tiles. The water was clear and running at a pretty fast clip, and there were little frogs and salamanders dotting the course of it. It looked freakishly natural, as if the store had just assembled itself around a creek... that is to say, there was no indication that the stream had been built into the store. Now, having stood in that exact spot countless times prior, I knew that that was not the case. The stream was obviously an addition. But the effort that had gone into making the storebound stream seem like a natural occurrence was staggering. It bothered me in a vague sort of way… I couldn’t fathom the purpose behind so much seemingly pointless work.

I set my detergent back on the shelf, bent down and cupped my hand into the water. It was cold. A tiny swarm of tadpoles darted away from my fingers as I broke the babbling surface. There was silt and a smattering of pebbles on the bed of the creek. I moved them around, kicking up a small storm of dirty plumes into the water. It felt so real. It was real, I suppose, but it didn’t seem any different than any brook you’d stumble across out in the woods. I stood up, flicked the excess water off my hand and dried it against my pants legs. Then I looked up and saw someone standing across the stream, just staring at me. He startled me so much that I nearly fell over.

There was a man across the stream. He was tall and lanky, dressed all in faded blue denim. I always hate how it looks when someone wears the same color pants and shirt. I’m not sure why, and given the fact that the man was tapping the blunt edge of a large butcher’s knife into his palm, I probably should have been thinking about something else. But I wasn’t. I was thinking about how stupid his faded blue shirt looked with his faded blue jeans. It didn’t take long, though, before I noticed the lunatic smile on the man’s narrow, craggy face. He had longish yellow-gray hair, the color of curdled cigarette smoke, and his lips were obnoxiously red. His teeth were certainly nicer than the teeth you’d expect a knife wielding lunatic to have, but his skin was almost stony in texture. All in all, he looked quite crazy and I wasn’t at all thrilled to see him. Helpfully, however, he had a nametag on his shirt. Unfortunately, his name was “T. Devil.”

We stood there, parted by the stream, and staring at each other for some time. Eventually, unsure of what to do, I sputtered, “What does the ‘T’ stand…”

He cut me off and said, “’The.’ It stands for ‘The.’”

“’The Devil,’” I replied. “I see.”

“It’s not my given name,” he clarified.

“Ah,” I said, wondering if should just run the hell away as fast as I could. But I didn’t. I stood where I was, conversing with a crazy man named The Devil while an inexplicable river ran between us. It was a bad decision, I will admit it, but it was the decision I made. I can’t adequately say why. I just stood there, almost transfixed by the man, or by the situation. After a brief silence, I decided to speak again. “Stream’s new,” I said.

“Nah,” The Devil said, never losing that horrifying smile. “It’s always been there.”

It hadn’t. I know it hadn’t. But I decided not to press the issue. “Oh,” I said.

“You just couldn’t see it before,” The Devil explained. “But it’s always been there.”

A brief silence passed again with The Devil and me just blinking at each other. Then, suddenly and chillingly, I realized that The Devil wanted to kill me. It just made sense given his demeanor and bladed accessory, but the reality of it sunk in at that very moment. My throat went dry with fear and I began to perspire from pretty much every pore. It struck me, then, that I should get a confirmation from the predator, and so I asked, “You’re here to murder me, aren’t you?”

The Devil nodded an affirmation.

The fear that overtook me was not the fear that I expected. It was not panic. It was anxiety, like the anxiety that comes along with being ill-prepared for a test, or the anxiety that accompanies a first date. I was nervous. I was nervous I would fail somehow and this crazed man would succeed in his endeavor to murder me. But despite the anxiety, I had no doubt I could keep him at bay if I just managed to focus. By no means was my situation hopeless. Something, already, was keeping him confined to his side of the creek. I began to formulate hypotheses. Perhaps it was the creek itself that was keeping The Devil from reaching me. I decided to ask him if that was the case. He had been unfailingly helpful so far, after all.

He nodded again and I breathed a sigh of relief. I would be fine. He was trapped in sporting goods and I was free to just leave the store with my life intact. A close call, certainly, but no harm done. I backed up, slowly distancing myself from The Devil and my protective creek. I kept my eyes on the lunatic the whole time, worried that, somehow, the status quo might up and change on me. He kept smiling. “I’m going to leave, now,” I told him. “I hope that’s ok?” I didn’t think I really needed his permission, but it seemed like the polite thing to do.

This time, The Devil shook his head. I didn’t like that. Not even a little. I decided to increase my back-up speed, hoping to make my way to the store's foyer a bit quicker. Instead, I tripped over myself and fell onto my rear end, landing with an echoing thump on the pockmarked tiling. All the while, The Devil continued staring at me, still grinning maniacally and still tapping his knife into his palm.

I was a bit shaken by my fall and growing more and more unnerved as moments passed that did not lead to my exit of the store. Sitting on the ground, amidst the surprising amount of dirt and detritus that had probably accumulated over the course of a single shopping day, I felt my limbs and my body become very heavy. Each finger felt like tiny weights had been tied to them. My bones felt leaden and dense. A soreness rippled across the muscles in my back and I felt ridiculously exhausted. I stifled a yawn, trying to keep a direct focus on my would-be killer, before noticeably wincing from my heaviness. I struggled to stand, but I overcame gravity and lifted myself from the ground. As I did, my armor creek shifted, changing course by making an L-like bend into the main aisle, veering sharply right through home goods and resuming course by cutting back through the row of plastic garbage cans and Rubbermaid totes. The creek was now running behind me. Without changing my position at all I was suddenly standing on the same side of the brook as The Devil. And, of course, that brook was the only thing keeping him from killing me.

My heart began to race. My nervousness escalated into a full blown panic. I no longer had any delusion that things were going to be just fine. Because a murderer was moving toward me. He was slow and deliberate, but he was moving toward me and he was going to plunge his butcher's knife directly into my heart. I knew it. I could feel it. I tried to back away, but now I felt trapped by the very same running water that had protected me mere moments before. I couldn't move. I was held fast by some sort of force, a compulsion I couldn't explain. I shut my eyes tightly and envisioned a place where I wasn't about to become the victim of a gory assault. But even with my eyes closed, all I could imagine was The Devil a few footsteps away readying a sharp object to pierce my skin over and over and over again. I wanted to scream out something, a demand for The Devil to stop, to leave me alone, to drop the knife, walk away and never return. But I couldn't make a sound. Nothing came from my throat but a sickly little gurgle. I was about to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Time seemed to freeze, and the agony of anticipation just hovered over me, heavy and thick like dripping molasses slowed by the cold. I was dying a hundred times between each heartbeat. I was ready, but I wasn't ready at all.

And then my brain created its own reality. Still in my mind's eye, still with my real eyes clamped tightly shut, I pictured the ground moving. I pictured space coming between The Devil and me, as if the store was growing from its middle, pushing us outwards and away from each other. New ground just rose up out of nothingness and took its place, seamless, in the new gap that separated us. I moved one direction without taking a step, and he was carried the opposite way. The world just filled in between us and I was safe and he was far away. It was a wonderful little fantasy, a glimmer of stupid hope to break up the tedium of my panic.

But when I opened my eyes, it had happened. Suddenly, I was standing at the edge of a huge gulf of new space. The world had moved us. I had moved us... with my mind. I don't know how, exactly, but my vision was absolutely accurate. The Devil had been pushed so far away that he was no longer visible. Instead, there was a wide expanse of empty store, just floor and walls and ceiling with exposed rafters and buzzing fluorescent lights high overhead. The aisle, the one where the creek had once flowed, the aisle that had separated The Devil and me had become miles wide. I couldn't see the other end of it. The horizon faded with emptiness. For all I knew, that space went on forever. Had it not just saved my life, I imagine I would have found the event wholly disconcerting. As it was, I found it to be an almost mystical experience.

Having successfully dispatched The Devil, I decided to return to my initial task of buying detergent. It seemed rather hollow, though, considering everything I had just experienced. Somehow, getting my whites their whitest paled in comparison to the power I had exerted with my mind. I wondered if my abilities extended beyond self-preservation. I decided to try a new trick.

I stood very still, shut my eyes tightly again, and envisioned grass growing beneath my feet. I imagined trees in time-lapse growth springing up from the ground, gaining heft and dominating the landscape. I imagined my creek changing directions again to flow through my new little patch of nature. Woodbridge's store would still contain it, but the new growth would be a tiny refuge of natural beauty in a sea of poorly lit artifice. I imagined dandelions growing between blades of grass, and mosses bedding down on the roots of the gnarled maples and oaks that stood in rapt attention on the banks of the babbling stream. I imagined birds nesting in the branches and singing out beautiful, spring-time hymns through green and red leaves that fluttered in an air conditioned, industrial fan generated breeze. I imagined grasshoppers leaping through the new lawn, munching on all this novel greenery, while worms and ants dug tunnels below the surface. Surrounded by aisles of cribs and baby clothes and displays of bargain priced DVD's, I tried to create life.

And I did. I opened my eyes and my park was there, just as I envisioned it. Just as I had done with The Devil, I had transmuted space, changed reality to my own accord. It was lovely. It was amazing. My attention to detail was incredible. I had made something beautiful spring from the recesses of my mind, and now it existed. I ran my hand over the soft grasses that had risen up from the shattered blue and white tile and I was amazed by how legitimate it felt brushing against my skin. The bark of the trees split and splintered in convincing jags and patterns. The leaves were variegated correctly. I caught a grasshopper and marveled at each little exoskeleton plate. It was all as real as anything made by God, but it was there because of my will. You can see how this could inflate an ego.

I worried very much for my sanity and doubted my ability to use these new powers in only a constructive manner. I worried that any stray thought, now, would suddenly be made real. As if on cue, horrible things started entering my mind without any provocation from my consciousness. I was hit with the notion of my family perishing. I fretted, now, that it had happened. It struck across my thoughts like lightning... my childhood home, up on an abandoned hill in the wilderness, still populated with my parents and siblings and pets, lit up with squares of yellow light as twilight spilled out around the countryside. It was so peaceful for one moment. But my brain conjured up a terrible event. An airplane overhead, a giant jet aircraft, stalling like an old car on a winter morning. The engines just sputter out dead and the tons of steel and plastic and glass fall like a stone from the sky. And the plummeting craft, of course, is headed directly for my house, for my family. I can't stop the train of images. My family is inside of their house. They hear the cacophony above, but they don't know what it is. It's getting louder. They don't have a clue. Before they can even guess that the thundering rumble is dangerous, the jet crushes their house in a fury of gravity and fire and apocalyptic destruction. And because this has come into my brain, I am terrified that it has happened.

More stray thoughts come and go. They vary in complexity and in malevolence. Some are almost benign, others are horrific. The United States capital building is now made of croutons. Every home in a nearby neighborhood is ransacked by ghostly marauders riding ebony, skeletal horses. Knives grow in the bellies of my former classmates, slicing them open from the inside out. Thriving metropolises are reduced to flaming planks and cinders. Trees morph into giant men who spend their time meditating by the shores of the oceans. Frogs rise up from the swamp on two legs and begin a conquest of all mammalian life. I am wreaking havoc with my mind. I can feel it. Every stupid thought breed something terrible, something nonsensical, something deadly. How many people are suffering for my ability? How many people are dying because of some new trick that I've discovered.

The exhilaration of what I can do has drained from me. It's too much to control.

I decide, perhaps, that I should bring The Devil back.