| General Fiction posted April 16, 2025 |
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I woke up this mornin' feelin' fine
Serial, part 1
by Wayne Fowler
Phil occasionally woke in the body of other people. So far, his mission has been obvious, and with his friend Tom’s assistance, successful.
This is part one of a two-part story.
This is part one of a two-part story.
Serial, part 1
Phil and Tom reached the decision mutually, deciding to tap into the largesse that the CIA made available. Declaring a ten-million-dollar bounty on Putin’s head, placed there during the Obama administration when bounties had been placed on American servicemen, Tom and Phil shared the money equally. Their mutual decision was to relocate to the Rocky Mountains just west of Denver, near enough to the airport yet perched on a mountainside with stupendous views. Each had cabins satisfying their different tastes. They also bought neighboring condos on the Alabama seashore that they signed over to VRBO, vacation rentals by owner, blocking out dates for their own use.
With an all-day hike planned for the near future, they agreed to drive into Denver together to shop at the Cabella hunting and fishing goods store, checking out the newest innovations for the Colorado wilderness. Tom called Phil as he was leaving his cabin to pick him up. It sounded like he’d awakened Phil. He thought that strange, but hey, everybody had bad nights once in a while.
+++
Phil woke to strange surroundings, the room completely blacked out. It was not his own room, a bedroom without window treatment, letting in moon and starlight. Also, the mattress was far too soft, giving him an ache. He got up slowly, having learned his lesson as the Pope: figure out who you are before any crazy-quick movement.
His size and basic shape were similar, but the three- or four-inch-long facial hair was new.
When he got to the bathroom and checked himself over, he decided that he would do his new friend a favor and cut the beard off, or at least way back to the skin.
He’d yet to figure out who he was or why he was there.
+++
Jim Dodd at first wondered why his bed was so hard, then he wondered where his beard had gone. Had he gotten drunk and shaved it off? He did not recognize himself in the bathroom mirror.
There was only one beer in the refrigerator, that and a few slices of salami were breakfast. Then the phone rang. It was a landline. He thought that was strange.
“Hello. Yeah, okay.” Somebody coming to pick him up to go to Cabella’s. How did he know if he still wanted to go? He played along to try to figure things out. He didn’t feel like he’d lost his mind, but who knows what that feels like?
+++
“Hey, Phil. You all right? What’s the good word?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Tom turned his all-wheel drive crossover around and eased down the curving driveway that more than a few times had wild animals in it. He thought about asking more but didn’t want to nag. Phil would snap out of it on his own time. As the top of the hour approached, Tom turned on the radio for the five-minute news broadcast. Phil snarled a vicious glare at him for doing it but said nothing. Tom lowered the volume and as soon as it was over, shut the radio off.
Once more, Tom asked Phil what the good word was. The response was more silence.
+++
“Hello. Tom speaking, who’s this please?” Caller I.D. stated an unknown caller. While answering, Tom thumbed down the audio.
“Hey, Tom…”
“Yeah,” Tom answered, interrupting and sounding completely out of character.
After a slight pause, Phil continued. “Got somebody with you. On your way to Cabella’s?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Well, I guess you’ve figured out, it isn’t me,” Phil said.
“Yeah, Cabela’s. Need anything? Learn who your visitor was last night, a bear, maybe?” Tom referenced a grumpy guy as the man Phil switched into, forcing himself to keep his eyes peered directly ahead.
“Not yet. Call me when you get a chance?”
“Yeah, sure. I will. Oh, you wanted some bear spray. You still want it?”
“Good idea. Be careful.”
“No problem. Later.” Tom turned to the man in Phil’s body, “That was a neighbor. He lives on the same mountain.”
The man who woke up as Phil didn’t reply.
+++
Phil began a methodical search of the house, a duplex rather, his side being a small two-bedroom, one-bath approximately 800 square feet pigsty. His wallet contained an expired Missouri driver’s license and a single credit card with a different name. There was forty-one dollars in cash and two quarters. A search of the car offered nothing, not even a registration or insurance card – not good for Tom, knowing that a likely ne’er-do-well was in the car with him.
Phil noticed a door to what was probably a small storage off the carport. It was locked, but he had the key. The tiny closet held a snow shovel, a bag of salt, an old-fashioned bumper jack, and a toolbox that could contain tools or fishing gear, though there was no fishing pole. It was for tools, basic home-repair tools.
The room looked to be unaltered – no homemade hidey hole compartment. Picking up a folded plastic tarp, Phil noticed a screw tip pointing up through a shelf board where it might have easily punctured and torn the tarp. It was a screw where a screw had no business being. Phil kneeled to look up under the shelf. There was a shallow wooden box held up tight to the underside of the shelf by two butterfly latches, the kind that if you turn it ninety degrees, the box drops from the keepers. A facia board had the box hidden from the front.
There was no lid to the box, allowing Phil to see an inch or more stack of drivers’ licenses. Using only his fingernail, though with the man’s own fingerprints there was no need, Phil flicked them aside one by one. Some had blood on them. Most were young women. Phil sat down on a dirty plastic lawn chair beside the step into the house. He needed to think.
His immediate instinct was to call the police. Then he remembered that the fingerprints on the licenses would match his own since he was in the man’s body.
His second instinct was to call Tom back and warn him that a potential serial killer was in the car with him. His next concern was that the man had Phil’s own body and possessions, his house, his car, everything, and could do Phil grave damage, even get him killed – or worse, kill someone using his own body.
From inside the house, Phil got a kitchen garbage bag. He would preserve the evidence. From previous experience, Phil knew about attic crawl spaces and through an access panel in a bedroom closet, he carefully hid the box, covering it with insulation.
Then he called Tom. “Tom! That isn’t me!”
“Yeah. I got that far. Oop. Gotta go. I’ll call you back.” Tom hung up as the man in Phil’s body approached.
“You ready ta go?”
“Not quite. My friend wants a knife, too. A four-inch Buck.”
“Your friend got a name?”
“Tom McQuin.” Tom spat out his own real name, not his government-issued Bob Thayer. Tom quickly surmised that anything that took a moment to come up with would ring false.
“Well, he should pick out his own knife.”
“Yeah. He should. But I can get the bear spray. That’s pretty generic. I gotta use the head, though.” Tom pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Haven’t gone since I got up. Then drank two cups of coffee.” Tom quietly chastised himself for his nervous blathering. He didn’t need an excuse to pee.
Inside the restroom after a glance over his shoulder, he redialed the number Phil had called from. Phil didn’t pick up. Tom couldn’t know that the phone that Phil had called from was in his pocket and that in his crouched position in the attic, he could not quickly retrieve it. As the call went to voice mail, Phil’s imposter walked into the restroom.
“C’mon. He can get the bear spray when he gets his knife.”
Tom kicked himself for saying knife instead of water treatment pills, or a snake bite kit.
“Need anything in town, long as we’re here?” Tom asked, hoping to come up with a plan.
After a long moment of silence, the man answered. “Yeah. He’s outta beer.”
“He’s…? Tom repeated.
“Cut the crap. You know I ain’t yer friend. Prob’ly him on the phone. I don’t know what you got goin’ on, but I don’t like it.” After a few moments, once Tom got them away from Cabela’s and on the way to a convenience store, the man told Tom to stop at a bank and get some cash from an ATM.
Tom took the moments of silence to try to think. He could get a policeman’s attention easily enough, but then what… “Officer, this isn’t my friend. It’s a stranger in my friend’s body. Oh, and I’m pretty sure he’s a bad man.”
His thoughts were interrupted by the stranger. “I’m rethinkin’ this whole thing. A new identity. Might be a good thing. Start over. Nothin’ ta tie me to this guy. Who is he, anyway? How much money he got?”
“He’s Bill Johnson. He has some. I don’t know how much, He’s retired.” Tom knew that the man had already looked at Phil’s driver’s license. He probably didn’t have time to search the house yet.
“Let’s go to his… my place. I wanna look around. Figure this guy out.”
“I can drop you off. No problem.”
“Nice try. We’ll both go. You can even have one a’ my beers since you paid for ‘em.”
The man snickered through sneering lips.
AI drawing courtesy of Pixabay
Phil Jansen and Tom McQuin have been given new identities by the Federal Gov't (Bill Johnson and Bob Thayer) but we know them by their given names.
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one point
and 2 member cents. Phil Jansen and Tom McQuin have been given new identities by the Federal Gov't (Bill Johnson and Bob Thayer) but we know them by their given names.
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