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Voices

  A Special Abilities Novel

  Brad C. Mann

  Chapter 1

  Good First Day

  It was still early morning when I finished getting my car loaded down with all my clothes, TV, small CD player, and a new laptop that was a graduation present from my mom. Plus I had packed a week’s worth of junk food I was sure would not go to waste.

  By mid morning I was cruising down I-75 in my freshly waxed Pontiac Grand Prix. I got the car a couple of months ago, right after my high school graduation. Since then I must have waxed it at least fifty times. It’s amazing there’s any paint left on it! The car cost me a bit more of my savings than I had planned, so I’d have to find a way to replace the extra money I’d spent.

  I was getting hungry for some real food, so shortly after hitting the Kentucky/Tennessee state line I pulled off the highway into a Zippys burger. Zippys was one of the many fast food joints lining the main street. I skipped the drive thru and parked in the lot. Jumping out of the car I proceeded to stretch every single aching muscle in my body. I always go inside, because when I’m low on cash it pays off to go into the counter sometimes. And I got lucky this time. As I walked to the counter the store manager in a loud and aggravated voice was telling the assistant counter manager what a poor job the day shift crew did keeping the place clean, and he knew her crew would do a much better job later on that night.

  The rich smell of french fries and burgers filled the air by the counter making me feel even hungrier now. The store manager was walking back through the double swinging doors towards the kitchen as I got to the counter. I thought I’d heard his voice well enough, so I threw his voice back thru the double doors to the counter manager.

  “Give that good looking young man whatever he wants on the house for having to see this place in such a mess.”

  I added the “good looking” part... well, just because I could. The cute counter manager stared back at the double doors, taking a second to digest what she’d heard. She turned back to me, slightly embarrassed, smiled, and said, “What would you like sir… on the house of course.”

  “I’ll take the three sandwiches that are under the warmer and a large chocolate milk shake to go please.”

  I took the sandwiches and shake she bagged for me, gave her a wink and headed out the door within ninety seconds of hitting the counter which was almost a record time for me. In and out, no blood no foul.

  I never order stuff that takes too long in case the person’s voice I was stealing… no… stealing is an ugly word, lets say… mimicking, yeah in case the person’s voice I was mimicking decided to come back. I only did this when I was short on cash, or saving cash for something like college. So… in the last four years I’ve eaten a lot of free burgers.

  The special sauce on the burger was really hitting the spot when I realized, I hadn’t had a Zippys burger since I was in the 8th grade. The last time I had been in a Zippys Burger wasn’t a memory I cherished.

  ***

  My mom and I pulled into the Zippys Burger that was across the street from my orthodontist. We always stopped there before my appointments to get my braces tighten, before my teeth had a chance to start hurting. Every time I would go to the orthodontist they would tighten my braces, making the tension on my teeth so intense I couldn’t eat for about a week.

  This particular day as my mom walked thru the door to Zippys just ahead of me, I saw over her shoulder, a man with a gun facing us with his back against the counter. He was holding another man around the neck with one arm, and pointing the gun in his other hand at the door yelling something. The gun suddenly went off and my mom went down in front of me, right inside the doorway. I felt a sting hit my leg as blood splattered from the back of my mother’s leg onto my pants. I ducked back out the door as it shut behind my mother, trapping her inside. I looked around and saw an old hubcap lying on the ground just a few feet from me. I bent down and in one motion grabbed the metal hubcap and whipped it through the front window to set off the store’s alarm system. The crook panicked as the front window shattered and the alarm blared out. He released his hold on the hostage giving him a shove as he jumped over the counter and took off through the back. As I jumped in through the smashed window, I saw the hostage that had been held at gunpoint a second ago, was now bent over my mothers leg applying pressure to her wound. I only paused long enough to feel confident that my mother wasn’t in any real immediate danger before racing after the crook.

  I was pretty familiar with the kitchen here since the guy that owned the place liked my voices, and would sometimes comp my meals if I entertained him. I knew there was only one way out the back.

  Running through the kitchen I grabbed a lighter off the counter and as I went by the searing hot stove I grabbed a medium size pot of grease. When I opened the back door into the alley the crook was already in his car and headed my way!

  I threw the boiling pot of grease at the oncoming car, covering the hood and windshield with grease. As the car sped past me I lit the lighter and tossed it onto the hood igniting the grease. He swerved turning right out of the alley onto the road as the flames started to billow. Just as he rounded the corner a police car, lights and siren screaming turned into the alleyway. As the police car skidded to a stop in front of me the cop driving the car barked at me, “which way did he go kid?” I pointed up the alley ahead telling him the guy turned right at the corner…and, he’d be the one driving the car that was on fire. The cop gave me a look like I was stupid or something, before burning rubber down the alley onto the main road.

  When I got back inside the paramedics had arrived and were giving my mom something for her pain. It must have been some pretty good stuff, because she was telling the young paramedic to adjust his collar, and how it’s always important to always look your best.

  Lawrence, the owner of Zippys was being helped up from behind the cash register and treated for a major blow to the head.

  Since Mom had the bullet go clean through her leg I was the one that ended up with the worst of it. That sting I felt earlier, turned out to be a bullet. The one that had gone through my mom’s leg had lodged itself into mine. Strange, but the bullet going in really didn’t hurt much, it was the digging it out part that killed me. Mom got to cruise through the rest of the day high on painkillers, while I sat in the emergency room most of the afternoon with an orderly digging mercilessly at my leg to retrieve the bullet.

  I hadn’t realized it at the time it was all happening but the man that was being held hostage was Mr. Garner my school councilor. Mr. Garner went on and on to the local press about how quickly I had acted and turned the situation around, and that he owed me his life.

  The police caught the crook just two blocks from the Zippys Burger, his windshield melted so badly he couldn’t see out of it causing him to smash into a parked car.