Thank You, Mr. Hookworm (The Good Vibes Series Book 1) Read online

  “Good morning, Sidra. Did you sleep well? Pleasant dreams?” Mittens yawned and stretched a bit.

  “Hello, kitty. I had an odd dream. Why do you ask?” Sidra responded. “Are you going to get me my breakfast this morning?”

  “What? Why would I do that? The other humans may think that strange and I am not your servant in any case!”

  “I dunno. I figured since you had some new abilities, you could possibly open your own cans of stinky fish product and scoop your own litter box.”

  “Oh, you wound me, dear child! I thought those were privileges associated with housing another species against her will under your roof. Besides, your dear mother fed me at the crack of dawn when I wouldn’t stop walking on her hair. No one can sleep under such conditions.” Again the darned smirk! “But, before you forget, tell me about your dream and what you think it means.”

  Sidra took a deep breath and began. “I have a feeling you know all about it, Saturn.” The cat nodded approvingly at Sidra’s use of her preferred name.

  The dream started out in my room. I was sleeping soundly and, suddenly, there was a knock on my window. My window! Ordinarily, I would have been frightened as hell and run to get my mom or dad, but instead, I went over to the window and opened it. To my delight, but not to my surprise, Smith stepped over the sill and entered my room. He hugged me and kissed my cheek, then informed me that only I could save the world, only him and me. We were suddenly in costume, like beyond cosplay, but totally suited up in capes and boots and leotards, and I had on no glasses but could see clearly. Just like when I was sitting in history class yesterday. (“Oh shit, I am going to be late for school.” “Just go on with the story, Sidra!” Mitten cautioned.) Smith looked absolutely gorgeous and I felt that way under his gaze. (Mittens rolled her eyes.)

  “Follow me,” he said.

  “Where?” I asked, although I would follow him anywhere anyway. (“Stop editorializing,” Mittens reprimanded her. Sidra shrugged and continued.) He led me out the window (and we left it open, but I don’t care now because if you get out, you can answer if I call you) and we floated. The night was perfect: midnight black sky, twinkling stars, cool breeze, clear air. (“Very descriptive,” Mittens interrupted. “You must get high marks in creative writing.” “Shut up and let me tell it already!”) He took my hand and we glided, not really flying, but glided through the sky toward the woods at the edge of the park. We landed at the base of a large tree and sort of melted into the ground. We were underground and it seemed so normal, like Beam me up, Scotty, and there we were! Anyway, there were all these people chained to the walls of this cave. I knew it was the underworld and these people were my neighbors, classmates, and other people from the community. All being held captive. They were being guarded by these beasts in loincloths. They had horns on their heads and swords in their hands. The people chained to the walls were moaning in pain, obviously being tortured by these creatures. Smith pointed, and there I saw my parents and brother chained up, bleeding and starving. I tried to go to them, but Smith stopped me and said, “If you save them, you need to save everyone. The world is counting on you, Sidra.” At that point, I woke up and there was a little bitty kitty cat on my bed.

  “Bahahaha!” Mittens fake-laughed loudly. “You better get your butt moving. You are running kind of late.”

  “Aw crap! School!”

  Just then, there was a pounding on the bedroom door. Sidra’s brother, Axel, who was a couple years younger than her and attended the same high school as a freshman, yelled, “Siiiiidrrraaaa, bus in ten minutes!”

  “Auuughhh! Not gonna make it!” She grabbed jeans from the floor and pulled them on over yesterday’s underwear, yanked on a bra that was hanging on the closet door knob after pulling off her t-shirt that she slept in with her back to Mittens. After all, her cat was now a judgy little rat who could report on Sidra’s shortcomings to anyone. She vaguely and randomly wondered if the cat had an Instagram or Snapchat account. Saturn@talkingcat. Profile: I talk. Sidra shook her head and went back to dressing quickly. Her one concession to clean clothing was to tug hard on a dresser drawer, select a wrinkled t-shirt, and toss it over her head, feeling for her sneakers with her feet while poking her arms through the shirt’s sleeves. Once dressed, she ran into the bathroom, splashed her face with water, introduced her teeth to her toothbrush, and ran a brush through her hair. “Yuck,” she said to her reflection. Once back in the bedroom, she located her book bag, slung it over her shoulder, and said, “Later, Mitty-kitty.”

  Mittens blinked at her either lovingly or sarcastically. One of the future saviors of our world, she thought. God help us all.

  6

  Good Vibe Three: Simon

  On the day that he retired from teaching, Simon Berger left the biology classroom where he had been located for the last thirty-five years without ceremony, without words, without goodbyes. Without a bang, but with a whimper. Only one small item, a framed picture depicting happier times, came with him. All the notebooks of lesson plans, textbooks, files on him and students housed in his cabinet—all these artifacts were left for the next person to use, throw out, whatever. He spoke to no one, knowing he would not be keeping in touch with anyone. He had nothing in common with his colleagues anymore. They were all younger than he was, idealistic, and their values did not mirror his. He had no love for the tenth-graders and he was exiting a full two months prior to the end of the school year, leaving them in the lurch. He knew there would be an unfortunate substitute teacher—or a series of them, most likely—and he gave not a shit. Someone else’s problem now, he thought. No more kids, no more lesson planning (“Make biology come alive!” the assistant principal said. Oy, how painful, he thought every time she said it.), no more pipsqueak administrators evaluating his work and finding him lacking. He was done, having put in his papers after a particularly awful day of disruptive kids, ending with yet another unscheduled observation. He knew how it would turn out, so he went home to the small condo he bought after there was no reason to keep the house, turned on his laptop computer, went to the website for state pensions and filled out a form, emailed a resignation to his district, and prepared to wait out the two months. The next day, the assistant principal called him into her office to discuss what she saw in his classroom and he shut her down with great satisfaction.

  “Ms. Thompson, with all due respect, I don’t give a flying crap. These kids are rude, unteachable, unreachable. Your expectations for me and them are ridiculous pie-in-the-sky pipe dreams. You have no future scientists, doctors, or marine biologists in any of my three classes and it is folly to believe otherwise. In two months, I will be retiring from this nasty hellhole in which you pretend there is no existing discipline problem, where these punks that lack basic social graces are expected to learn higher order concepts; where the teachers are blamed for their students’ blatant refusal to learn anything except how to make the adults who work here miserable. My heart is no longer in this, so please stop trying to make me pretend it is.” With those words, Simon stood up, nodded politely, and excused himself. Ms. Thompson did not visit him again, nor did she say much more to Simon for the final forty days of his employment.

  Simon’s pension was more than adequate. His house had made a huge profit and the condo was not very expensive. The maintenance fees were reasonable, and he was content there, away from the memories that would hit him in the face daily. Memories of his beloved Annie, with whom he was supposed to spend these upcoming golden years.

  He missed his bubbly, outgoing wife. He could watch her for hours and had done just that every day for the thirty-two years they were married. She was, interestingly, a teacher when they met, a kindergarten teacher who loved kids but never had any of her own. She would have been as good a mother as she was a wife, but they were unsuccessful in that regard. There was never a reason found, but Simon suspected the fault lay with him; she was too wonderful and perfect to fail at such an endeavor. However, Simon selfishly, never missed having chi
ldren, and he figured she didn’t either, surrounded all day as she was by them. After Simon met Annie, after he quit med school and was swimming along for a couple years without direction, waiting tables, doing comedy gigs that paid nothing, she suggested he try getting certified in teaching biology, so he did. Anything to please Annie, anything to keep her happy; to keep her. Once he was gainfully employed, she agreed to marry him, and he was the happiest man alive…until the day she discovered she had ovarian cancer. It had metastasized to her liver, then her colon, then who-knows-where…she was gone so fast, he barely had the time to tell her what she meant to him and that he couldn’t live without her.

  After Annie’s death, three years ago now, Simon felt nothing. He lost his will to succeed at work and was attending the job daily by rote. Eventually, he began to wake up a bit, enough to plan the next phase in his life, as painful as it was. Annie came to him in a dream, urging him to move on. The dream recurred regularly, and Annie told him to get a life, to find a purpose. He knew she was right, that he couldn’t keep going as he had been in the three-year vacuum. He was only sixty, for God’s sake. What he would do with the next sixty years, though, was anybody’s guess.

  7

  A slightly bedraggled Val sat in her supervisor’s office. She was exhausted, hungry (it was way past lunchtime), and somewhat scratched and beat up. She had a rip in her blouse on the shoulder seam and her hair was a mess. She was missing two of her acrylic nails. She was seething. All that bitch Bella’s fault. If that woman, whoever she was, hadn’t goaded her into attacking, Val would just be here for whatever that first meeting was supposed to be about. That was probably another warning about some bull or other. But this one was serious. The director who was over the supervisor was here and neither looked too pleased. They wore identical expressions of displeasure: lips pursed, eyebrows slightly raised, pens poised to take copious notes so that nothing bit them in the ass when she sued them. The way she looked at it, they put her life in danger with that crazy patient. Sure, the job had its risks, but this was ridiculous. She wasn’t an orderly who expected to fight with patients from time to time; she was a professional woman who deserved respect and consideration. And, for starters, they owed her what she estimated to be at least 500 dollars in damages. Hair, nails, blouse—all this had to be repaired. She stared dispassionately at the two administrators sitting across from her, waiting for them to begin. She certainly wasn’t starting the conversation.

  The supervisor cleared his throat. “Ms. Vincent, we have called this meeting to discuss the incident that occurred this morning with one of the patients—” He consulted a paper in a file folder not unlike the one that Val smacked Bella on the head with earlier. “—a Ms. Bella Klein. Ms. Klein is not pressing charges at this time but has checked herself out of Autumn House. We are very concerned that we have lost a client due to actions on your part, and I might add, this is not the first time you have caused this to happen. Therefore—”

  “Excuse me, but she put her hands on me and threatened me! I was defending myself! Look what she did to me! I need medical attention, which you did not offer, and a new blouse. Plus—”

  “We have a witness, a Miss Frieda Johnston, who says she saw you pushing Ms. Klein across your desk.”

  “Are you kidding? She walked in on the middle, after that bitch attacked me! I was defending myself!” Val was getting pretty heated and the two men across from her looked nervous. The director was actually licking his lips! As if she was going to attack them! Who had the energy at this point?

  “Ms. Klein, before she left, stated that she was attacked by you after you accused her of sleeping with your husband and breaking up your marriage.”

  “That is all wrong! You’re acting like I hallucinated during a session with a heroin addict instead of the other way around.”

  “Did you smack a patient with a file folder?”

  “That was after she—”

  “Answer the question, yes or no?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Ms. Vincent, this is an at-will state. It is my opinion that your issues stemming from your divorce—”

  “Are you firing me? After what I went through this morning, you should be paying me to stay in this rip-off joint—”

  The supervisor turned to the director and said, “Shall I call security?” The director nodded. The supervisor walked to the desk and dialed. He spoke into the phone and set it down.

  “Security? Are you kidding me?”

  “Ms. Vincent, as Mr. Brenner stated, you are fired. No charges are being brought against you at this time. We advise you to go quietly and without causing a scene. Consider yourself lucky we haven’t—”

  “Lucky? So far, you’re the one that’s lucky. Lucky my lawyer ain’t got here yet. Lucky—” At that moment, a security officer, one of the ones that Val smiled at, greeted, and exchanged pleasantries with most mornings, entered the office.

  “Take her out of the building, Officer Howard. Ms. Vincent is not coming back.”

  “Come on, Ms. Vincent.” Howard took Val by the arm. She shook him off.

  “I can go by myself,” Val protested.

  “You could go out in cuffs,” the director informed her.

  Val exited the office and then the reception area, and took a right down the hallway, intending to stop at her own office.

  “Ma’am, Ms. Vincent, you gotta leave now,” Howard protested.

  “I am getting my car keys, purse, and personal items so I don’t need to return. How you expect me to get home without my keys and wallet?”

  Howard shrugged and followed her. He figured if she tried something stupid, he could easily subdue her if he had to.

  Val entered the reception area of the office suite she now formerly shared with three other therapists. The reception area was deserted; that coward Frieda was probably alerted that Val was on her way out and to be scarce until she was gone. She went through the door of her unlocked and trashed office. Fortunately, her purse was on her desk chair where she tossed it that morning, and when she checked inside of it, her wallet, cash, and cards were intact. Her key ring, which contained her office key, house key, and car key, was on the desk where she left it. She picked up the purse and the keys, wrenched the office key off of the ring, and threw it across the room.

  “Ma’am, come on. You didn’t need to do that.”

  “Yeah, I did. It felt good.”

  Howard chuckled a little at that. “You seeing anyone?”

  “Are you implying I need professional help?” Val began to get angry again. Everyone was a shrink, right?

  He laughed. “Maybe you do, but I meant as in dating. I think you’re kind of cute.”

  “Whew, what an opportunist! This is really not the time or place to be hitting on someone!”

  “Sorry, but I’ve been wanting to ask you out for a while and I never got the nerve. Now I might never see you again and I had to take a chance. How about if you take my number and call me if it’s ever the time or the place?”

  “Sure, sure, here; write it down while I pack up.” She tossed him a sticky note pad and pen and started to open and close drawers. She found a plastic Kohl’s bag and filled it with more sticky note pads, pens, a stapler, staples, tape, tape dispenser, and other office supplies. When Howard handed her back the pad with his number, she threw it into the bag with the pen.

  “I’m at least worth being forgotten in your purse, aren’t I?” he asked.

  Val laughed and fished the pad out of the bag and popped it into her purse. She grabbed the pictures of Trevon and Tierra off her desk and Bella Klein’s file folder and stuffed them in the bag and sailed out the door with Officer Howard in her wake.

  8

  The first day of retirement started out in sheer bliss.

  Simon woke up at nine o’clock, stretched, passed a little gas, and thanked his lucky stars and God above that he was old at the right place and the right time. He had money in his retirement account, money coming in e
very month, money coming in two years from social security, a paid-for living space that was fairly quiet and safe, and a comfy Barcalounger parked in front of a fifty-five-inch flat screen TV. Life was pretty good, even though he didn’t have Annie to share it with, but he had his dreams, in which she visited him regularly.

  Last night, she came to him and they made love. It was fantastic, like it had been when they’d met in their late twenties. It felt so real and was so vivid that he smiled off and on throughout the day. That will last me for the next month, he thought, chuckling a bit as he went about straightening out the two-bedroom space, vowing to keep it clean now that he had all the time in the world to do it.

  Although Simon was sixty, he was in pretty good shape. He was nearly six feet tall, fairly lean except for a bit of a tummy, and still had about half of his hair, although it was all gray. His teeth were even and close to a white shade, and he took care of his body and mind. Every weekend, he would go to the gym and lift a bit, and several days a week, he would take a walk/run. This morning, he thought he would change his routine, going to the gym that was actually down the block, a five-minute walk from his home. As he was leaving, he saw from his balcony, which was a second-floor exit, that the new neighbors were moving in. There was a moving van parked in front, blocking his garage. Fortunately, he did not need his car at that moment. A Subaru Outback was parked in front of the neighboring garage with out-of-state plates. A pretty lady in her late thirties with brown skin and curly dark hair was talking with the movers, while a little boy that appeared to resemble her was riding a bike around the parking lot. A car entered the lot, and from Simon’s vantage point, it seemed that the little boy was in danger.