The Shasta Caper, Chapter Seven completed

Chapter Seven Continued

He closed his eyes. They had a good length of flight ahead of them. Normally, they could take a non-stop and get there in about three hours, but this flight was going to be stopping at least twice and they had to transfer once as well. So eight hours. He groaned inwardly, but such is the vagaries of life, when you try to help others you can't put boundaries on the time it takes.

A tall man climbed into the chair behind him and arranged himself. His knees pressed into the back of Samuel's chair and he groaned inwardly again. He wouldn't be able to lean back in the chair because of the man, and so he would have to sleep sitting up straight. They should have gone business class, but then again, those had been sold out.

He started to shut his eyes and the man behind him groaned and reached a hand onto his chair to adjust himself. Samuel thought nothing of it. Movement and disturbance were par for a flight in the air.

He no sooner shut his eyes than a blinding white light shone in his face the same time as he felt a hand clasp his right arm from between the chairs.

He opened his eyes. 

WHAM!

His vision was blurred by a mist of red and anger. He had never felt so much anger in his life. So much that the man who was standing opposite him in the bar was not much more than a blur.

"Look, Carl, I can come up with the money. I just need a little more time."

"I've given you all the time I promised already." He told Carl, a small mousey man with a potbelly and a bald head. A nondescript man with no future. Nothing more than a loser and would never be anything but a loser.

"I swear to you. This time it will be different."

They stood in an alley, outside the Monte Carlo Casino. It was inset somewhat. Cars parked up and down it. Traffic nonstop on the strip, lots of noise and distractions. They were just two drunks hollering as far as the crowd surging past knew, and were ignored as such.

He grabbed Carl by his left arm and squeezed hard. "I have to be paid now!"

"I don't have the money. I've already told you!"

He felt so much anger that he exploded. He struck Carl in the face. Carl fell back between two parked cars and slammed to the pavement. He hit his head hard against a curb and lay there.

He moved between the cars. "Come on, Carl, get up. I didn't hit you that hard!"

He kicked Carl in the side. Carl didn't move. "Get up you stupid little fat!"

Carl lay there and then he saw the pool of blood building near Carl's temple where he had struck the curb.

"Oh crap!" He said.

He began backing up. He struck something.

"Sir. You have a problem?"

Carl turned around it. It was one of the biggest Policemen he had ever seen. He was smiling. He didn't know about the body yet. Carl  tried to stop sweating. He was sweating profusely, but then it was that time of year when sweating was easy, especially when you were as overweight as he was. He was tall and appeared somewhat thin, but he was a hundred pounds overweight.

"Nah. Just got lost for a moment. Drinking."

"Ah. Happens." The Officer replied. "Like me to call you a Taxi?"

"I'd appreciate it."

The Officer took out his cell and called a Taxi. A few minutes later, after some nervous chit chat a Taxi came up and a passenger door flipped open.

He looked at the door, then the Officer. He reached out a hand to shake his hand, then he noticed the blood on the knuckles and the tears there. He rapidly withdrew the hand, but not before the Officer saw it. The Officer's face hardened for a moment.

He saw the threat and said quickly. "I hit a wall accidentally."

"Right. A wall. Have a safe night, sir." The Officer said as he climbed rapidly into the Taxi and told it to go straight to the airport.

He looked back and the Officer was still staring at the cab, then he looked at the alley. He started into the alley.

"Oh crap!"

WHAM!

Chapter Seven of The Shasta Caper is now posted.

Chapter Seven

Well, things didn't actually happen quite so fast as either of them expected. Jimbo got an unexpected call in the middle of that night from his brother Jacob, who claimed that someone had broken into the ranch and raided all the horses. When asked what happened next, Jacob had said, "I shot the bastard!"

Jimbo looked over at Samuel, who had fallen asleep on his sofa. Samuel rubbed his eyes. He had heard everything, but wasn't clear enough yet to make sense of it. "Is he in trouble?"

"In jail." Jimbo answered.

"Oh."Samuel answered.

"I have to fly there immediately to get him out."

"What about the rest of your family?"

"In jail."

"Why?"

Jimbo blushed a deep red. "They all shot the bastard."

Samuel laughed, then he realized what that meant and grew sober. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to laugh, but it's so damned absurd and utterly ridiculous..."

"I know." Jimbo said. "I should have known better than to leave my machine guns unlocked."

"They shot the raider with machine guns?"

Jimbo sighed. "Emotions can do strange things. My family comes from a long line of horse breeders and there's always been someone trying to take away what they rightly brought up. Guess the tradition wasn't lost on this generation either."

"How so?"

"Every generation has been in jail for shooting rustlers."

"It isn't against the law to shoot someone for breaking into your property." Samuel insisted.

"No. But is against the law to shoot their horses too."

Samuel groaned. "They machine gunned the Raider's horse too?"

"Yup."

Samuel laughed again. "You Texans!"

"Hey! I'm not the one who did it, besides if I had no one would have found out about it."

Samuel considered that sobering thought.

Jimbo waved his hands. "Whoa, pardner, I have never done that though. Not in this life."

"Okay!" Samuel said, sitting up and putting his feet into his shoes. He stretched, then climbed to his feet. "I'm going with you then."

"No way."

"Way...pardner!" Samuel insisted. "Someone's gotta protect all those airline hostesses from the love mangler."

Jimbo laughed at the stupid words. "Lover mangler." Then he stopped. "You don't really think I mangle the women I love, do you?"

"Jimbo, how many of those heinies did you do?"

Jimbo gestured to the kitchenette where four empty six packs were on their sides with empty bottles all about them.

"Case closed."

They almost ran out the door. The earliest flight left in thirty minutes. They were only twenty minutes away, but if they weren't fast, they wouldn't be able to run up the double flight of stairs in time to catch their flight, which Jimbo reserved by phone in the Taxi they took.

They both tipped the Driver, who gave them surprised looks, then ran for the escalators as they dashed into the terminal. They hit the stairs running and didn't stop, even with others ahead of them, somehow managing to get around them without tumbling them down or hurting anyone.

They finally had to slow down on the main floor, because Home Security Guards were everywhere. There had been a recent scare from some kind of political terrorist in the Middle East. There were always one or another going on. Had never stopped. Samuel knew why, but he didn't talk about it. No one really wanted to know, so he kept it to himself.

They reached the Southwest Lines ticket taker at the door as the last passenger was boarding. She was a knockout. Even Samuel, who was usually quite sedate when it came to lookers, had to admit she was stunning.

Jimbo, of course, immediately tried to get her phone number. She stonewalled him and he shrugged it off to win one lose one and stomped after Samuel, trying to hide his frustration with failing in front of his best friend.

They were greeted by an even more stunning hostess at the jet cabin door and Jimbo lit up like a Christmas Tree. "Christmas really does come twice a year in Vegas." He said to the Hostess, who had no idea what he was talking about as she took his ticket and motioned towards the back.

Samuel nodded to her, then looked back. Something about those eyes. What was it. He shook it off and carried on after Jimbo, who helped an old lady stack her baggage in the rack overhead and beneath her chair, before sliding into his own seat on the opposite side of the asile. Samuel slid past him next to the window. They were right over the wing section.

The old lady looked over at Jimbo and smiled. "You going to Texas, young man?"

"I am." He answered politely.

She gave him a card which she hastily scribbled a number on and offered to him. Politely, he took it and grinned at her. She winked, then slid a pair of blinders over her eyes and ear muffs over her ears and went to sleep.

Samuel elbowed Jimbo. "Christmas happens three times in Vegas."

"I hate you." Jimbo replied.

The flight was a bumpy one on take off. It always is over the Nevada range of mountains. The air currents play hell with the jets, shaking them like a milkshake for a good five minutes before settling down.

It didn't bother Jimbo any, but it always brought back memories to Samuel, because he had been involved in a plane crash once in Arizona near Sedona. It had been a special flight. A tourist flight and not a passenger jet like this one, but flying is flying and it took him a couple of years to get over his fears of flying after that. Even to this day he got a bit anxious if the plane suddenly jerked or veered, but when he shut his eyes he could always see the smiling face of a beautiful woman glowing with white light about her telling him "Everything is going to be fine, Sammie."

It was his mother. He was the only one who saw her. She was his Whisperer. Everyone had one or more. They were people who had gone on into the Light and had chosen to help from the other side by being Jiminy Crickets to the humans still caught up in nonsense of Earth living.

The Shasta Caper, Chapter Six is now posted.

The Shasta Caper

by John Pirillo

Chapter Six

Samuel, a quite good looking young man in his early twenties, with a mop of hair that always got in his eyes, bronzed by the sun with eyes that seemed to go forever and Jimbo, his tall Texan friend with a build like Hulk Hogan and an appetite like Wimpy from the old Popeye series of cartoons with a mustache that seems to be alive above his lips, rather than growing there and thick fingers and reddish hair cut short in a conservative manner.

The two, quite a pair. Sedate and quiet at the moment in Samuel's high rise condo in Vegas. It overlooked Sin City below. Quite a sight at night, resplendent with animated explosions of color and sound from traffice flows that never stopped, hordes of frantic tourists eager to get the most bang for their buck every day they stayed there; and hordes of taxis squeezing in and out of traffic, striving to grab as many rides as possible on their shifts, blasting and honking at each other and cars that got in their way.

Yes. A peaceful town. From above. Below it was frenetic energy, sexual tension, drinking too much, drugging too much and furtive criminals looking for the unwary citizens who came to gamble, but were too naive to realize not all of Las Vegas was safe at night.

Metro Police marched the corridors of walkways and streets. Sometimes on horse. Sometimes on cycles and patrol cars, but always searching, striving to contain the rough edges of the city to maintain some semblance of order and keep the cash flowing.

Samuel sat on his favorite lounge chair, a striped red and yellow aluminum chair that could drop back into a sleep mode, whenever he wanted to come outside for fresh air, which was often during the hot summer. Most people stayed in their freezing, refrigerated rooms, but he liked the cold. Maybe that was because he was born in a more temperate zone where temperatures ranged up into the hundreds at times. Maybe it was because it reminded him of the lifetimes he had spent in Egypt and Atlantis as a Pharoh or Soldier, or citizen. He didn't know anymore. Those thoughts and memories all just ran together in a stream of consciousness that he seldom integrated into his daily life anymore.

Except today.

Today he had been given a huge insight into his friendship with Jimbo. As a matter of fact that is why both of them were still up, staring down at the tourists below, instead of sleeping off a difficult day at its best, and a horrible one at its worst. Pretty normal for the two of them.

Jimbo had flown in from Texas, where he taught classes in Poetry and Horse breeding at his ranch in the Austin area. It took care of itself mostly, because of a great family filled with lots of wild men like him who loved poetry and horses and kept his students and clients happy with poetry and studs, as well as excursions on horseback when able.

"Figure it's like this, Sammie." Jimbo said, stirring on his couch that he had bought and installed on the balcony for his visits. Sammie never used it. It was Jimbo's through and through from the hot pink covering with paisley flowers to the soft cushions that seemed to touch the concrete of the balcony floor when anyone sat on them, which he had once, and never again.

No accounting for anyone's taste.

"We've been connected since high school. Why should it be any different bloodwise, or lifetimes wise, not that I believe in any of that pastlife horseshit, mind you."

"Course not." Samuel agreed, hiding his smile. He sipped at his coconut juice drink, then sighed. "Strange how all roads lead to Rome, though, isn't it?"

"I suppose." Jimbo nodded. "If you can believe in that crazy place that fell beneath the ocean."

"Atlantis."

"Whatever." Jimbo grunted, not wanting to go there. He loved his friend dearly, but he didn't necessarily believe in everything he saw and believed. But he did believe in what he experienced, and there had been plenty to rock the senses and his world, which didn't have normal explanations, but which he carefully compartamentalized as having to do with their ongoing battles with the evils of this world. Not that he believed in evil necessarily, except for today, maybe a little bit. That curling darkness that was zinging at him had smelled awful and packed a powerful punch. He had felt his nine lives scattering to the winds until Samuel had saved him. Yet again.

"Samuel. Don't you figure that by now we've saved each other's lives enough not to have to make up for any more of those so-called bad ones?"

"Karma's like an ocean. You remove a drop here, a drop t here, but there's buckets more moving in to take their place."

"In other words?"

"Too much brainpower to figure out, Jimbo. Too much intellect to handle the truth. Our minds are too small to bucket such huge thoughts as trillions of past lives."

Jimbo almost choked on that word. "Trillions!"

Samuel laughed. "Figuratively speaking, of course, since we'll never be certain until after we leave our bodies."

"Oh sure, that counts for nothing." Jimbo snorted again. He grabbed a beer. Root beer in this case and guzzled it down. He preferred the real stuff, but Samuel had been convincing him to lighten up on it, since his belly was starting to pop his pant buttons and break his belts lately.

"Sure do miss my Heinies." Jimbo mused.

"You mean Heinikens."

"Something like that. Sure." Jimbo shot back.

"So now what?"

"We find your friend."

"That should be easy for you. Just put your hand on me. Right here." Jimbo said, indicating a spot on his jacket. "She touched me there earlier, before you arrived."

"No thank you." Samuel replied, sitting up, alert. "Enough psychic avalanches for one day."

"You mean one lifetime, don't you?" Then he dropped his next words when Samuel gave him that usual enigmatic look that indicated there was more popping that was being said.

"So tell me again, what did she ask you about?" Sammie asked.

"Already told you. Not a hill of beans, unless you count Atlantis and Mount Shasta in the same breath."

Samuel jerked as if struck. "That's it!"

Jimbo grabbed a second root beer, popped its top with a thumb, the guzzled it down. He belched, then said. "That's what?"

"I should have seen it. When we were together in Atlantis we had been flung from an escape vehicle."

"Your flying saucer?"

"It wasn't a flying saucer. More like a very elaborate ride without wings." Samuel elaborated.

"Whatever. So?"

"We had just come from a place. A holy place. One that thousands of Atlanteans were seeking for refuge."

"Atlantis?"

"No, Mount Shasta. Though it wasn't called that back then. It wasn't even above the ocean. It was beneath it, like much of the States were back then. They were using the Vimanas to go underwater to the opening."

"Opening?" Jimbo grunted. "Who would build a city under the water?"

"Jimbo, those people built cities that floated in the air and had ships that could travel to the stars. Building underwater cities, or tunnels was nothing to them."

"But how could they have known Atlantis would go belly up? It makes no sense."

"Lord Osiris must have known."

"Lord whosit?

"Lore Osiris. He's considered a god to the ancient Egyptians. He supposedly led the good Atlanteans from the doomed continent into the land of Egypt."

"Then how could he have built the tunnels and cities under the water?"

"Not built. Managed their construction."

Samuel got up. He headed for the screen door, closing off his condo and opened it. He looked back at Jimbo. "Time to pack."

"Why?"

"We're going to Mount Shasta."

"Why?"

"I've got a hunch."

"Does it involve us getting our butts kicked and our heads bashed in and lots of nasty creatures that shouldn't exist?"

"More than likely."

Jimbo got up and grinned. "Count me in then!"

Got some lovely Christmas stuffers for your stockings on my site!

 

I've added my three beautiful mass market trade books, "Journey to the Center of the Earth," "Moriarity, Infinite Worlds, Infinite Choices," and "The Baker Street Adventures."

Yes, I'm tooting my own horn.

They're wonderfully bound, easy to read, with beautiful glossy covers and reasonably priced.

Just think of how many loved ones you could make happy with the purchase of these, and....need I say it,
you own stocking...waiting to be filled with hours of reading pleasure.

All the paperbacks also have digital copies available.

All are available in my online bookstore in this site.

John

Chapter Four and Five of the Shasta Caper are now posted.

Chapter Four

Jimbo sat next to Samuel, who ate a fish sandwich ordered up from the deli below, while Jimbo picked at the salad. He was the real vegetarian. At least when he was in the mood. He'd had two thick double burgers for breakfast already, but wasn't about to tell  his good friend that.

"You had two double burgers for breakfast." Samuel said between bites of his sandwich.

"How'd you know that?"

"A little birdie told me." Samuel said with amusement.

Jimbo looked to Samuel's window and sure enough a blue bird was perched on the sill there. it looked at Jimbo, flapped its wings, made a birdie raspberry and took off.

"So tell me about her."

"Nurse Red?"

"You know...the one who threw me the psychic curveball."

"Oh that one." Jimbo said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

"Well!"

"Give me a few moments to collect my thoughts."

Jimbo sighed, then looked at Samuel. "She's a distant cousin."

"God help me should I ever meet a close one." Samuel quipped.

Jimbo grinned at him. "Me too. They're mean!"

Samuel finished his sandwich, then eyed his intravenous feed. "I don't need that anymore."

"I'll tell the Nurse." Jimbo said to get up.

"And when you get back and she's taken it out, I want to know more about this cousin."

Jimbo nodded.

He went outside into the corridor, and made his way to the Nurse's Station, but it was empty.

"That's strange." He thought, then he went further down and the next station was empty too.

When he reached the elevators, one of them was standing open. All he could see was a blackness so thick that it was quite literally oozing out onto the floor. He started to back up, when a huge coil of swirling darkness shot at his face.

Chapter Five

"NO!" Samuel shouted from behind and raised both hands in front of him. They became white hot with power, exuding an incrementally brighter and brighter blue flame that softly curled about his body and his arms, making him look like a living bolt of lightning.

The blue curls of light shot forth and collided with the swirling darkness before it could strike Jimbo.

WHAM!

Samuel shook himself. He was laying on white hot sands in some kind of desert area. It took him several moments to regain his senses and realize he was no longer in the hospital. He stood up slowly, his whole body shaking from the effort. It was then that he noticed his right arm was swollen and black with poison.

He remembered.

His name was Rama Ananda Dey. He was a High Priest of Atlantis. He looked down and saw that he was wearing an outfit of pure white, or rather what had once been pure white, but was now stained with blood and oozing poison from the wound on his right arm.

His feet were open sandals enclosed in a kind of metallic cloth that kept firm, even though it was soft enough to rip with the hands. He looked up and saw an overturned chariot. A Vimana the Indians called it. It was tilted in the air at a right angle, its side almost touching the burning white hot sands of Atlan's sea shore. For it was the sea he was next to, but burning. It was in its last throes before it would sweep back swiftly into the distance, then come rushing back with an earthshaking roar to engulf him and all of Atlan or Atlantis that stood behind him.

The Atlanteans referred to themself first as Atlans, then Atlantians. The last was a vulgar term coined by the barbarians who were overthrowing the once majestic and powerful land.

He shook with exhaustion and fever. He had enough power left in the crystal in his left hand to heal himself, but saw no purpose to it. He could never use the Vimana again. Its power source was corrupted by the fallen one who lay about ten yards away.

He lay there, a blog of animism and anger. Once a powerful and good friend, but who had fallen to the Dark Side of the Light and used his magical powers to ensnare and enslave those less powerful. He had  gained a lust for power and his anger had thrust him into a war that both sides of Atlantis would eventually lose.

In their last years the right and the left had fought with each other viciously, striving to become the dominant powers in the nation of Atlans, but finally the political battles had ceased and then the real world war had begun.

The liberal Atlanteans had sought the aide of the Yellow Skinned ones to the East and the conservatives the Black and Brown skins of the West. They had striven nation against nation with mighty and powerful weapons...most built in Atlantis that had scarred the lands forever and thrust the majority of the world into an approaching ice age.

The final battle had been done this very day when he had to fell the man who had once been his brother and best friend. Lei Mand Dey. A beautiful man in every way. Not a woman alive could ever turn away from him, but he had never had enough of women or power. He always sought more, and when he learned his brother Rama was rising in the Great White Brotherhood of Light he sought to follow, but instead of following the course of Light, he had quickly managed to secretly pervert it.

At least he thought it was. Rama had seen the direction his brother was heading and done his best to prevent him, to stop his thrust of evil, but, in the end it had been a useless gesture and the man had fallen pray to his lust for power and now that the last missiles of dread were homing in on Atlantis to sink it forever and the vast oceans rose in fury to engulf it, it was over once and for all. Long live Atlantis the fallen, he thought bitterly.

He went to his brother's side and slumped next to him.

His brother's eyes opened, but he could not move. He had fared worse than Rama. "I can't feel anything any more." Lei had said.

Rama gently rubbed his brother's forehead with soothing white force. His brother's face cleared and his eyes brightened. "I never was as kind as you. Nor as wise."

"Wisdom is earned. Kindness is from the heart. One day you will have both." Rama had told him, smiling.

Then the roar of the returning sea caught both men's attentions.Their heads averted to watch the skyscraper waves rushing at hundreds of miles of hour to where they lay on the burning white hot sands of the beach.

"Will it hurt, brother?" He asked.

Rama shook his head. "No, I will release us before it strikes."

"Release us?"

Rama sat down the rest of the way and took his brother's limp right hand between his own. It cost him a great deal of pain, but pain was coming to an end in any case.

A blur of white energies began to emerge from his skin and bathe both of them.

"I feel better now." Lei said, even his breathing becoming more even,  instead of ragged and pained as it had been."

Rama felt tears in his eyes. "In our next lives we will learn to love one another."

"You mean I will learn to love myself." Lei said with the hint of a grin, a roguish grin that his brother remembered so well from when they had both been explorers together.

"Yes. That is so." He told Lei.

"I like the sound of the rain." Lei said, his eyes closing. "I think I can rest now."

"Sleep well, my brother." Rama told him, gathering the hand of his brother against his chest, feeling the pain in his arm burning like a torch through his heart. He felt the pain, but also the love for his lost friend and brother. 

Why men such as they had to struggle so hard to become what the Light intended he did not know in this life, but perhaps one day.

Then he felt a great shadow rising above him.

He looked up and smiled at the great tidal wave already dropping towards him and his dying brother. "Long live the Light!" He said gently, then...

WHAM!

Samuel struggled to hold onto the doorway where he stood with the intravenous line still dangling from his arm, his butt exposed in the rear from the nightgown he wore, his whole body shaknig.

Jimbo sat up from where he had fallen and rose to help Samuel.

"Brother." Jimbo said, the pain in his eyes obvious as he helped Samuel back to his room. "We really got to get better jobs."

"I agree. Brother." He said with a smile laugh, knowing that Jimbo had no idea he really meant what he was saying...literally. For Jimbo had been the brother who had fallen to the Dark side of the Light and risen anew, like the Phoenix from its own ashes, to become the roguish Texan who never let him down. 

He smiled inside himself. "I guess something's never change. We're still getting our asses kicked by the world."

Don't forget to check out my author site!

Dear All,

My author site is:  www.johnpirillo.com

I post a lot more material there.

Have a great weekend.

John

Chapter Three of The Shasta Caper is now posted.

Chapter Three

Jimbo crashed into the emergency care waiting room to see Nurse Red on a chair and a tiny rodent circling one of its legs. 

"I hate rats!" She said, her eyes wide as moons.

Jimbo, slipped the sidearm he carried back into its holster, then bent down to the floor. He looked at the mouse who looked back at him. He pulled out a bit of bread he had stuffed into one of his pockets and put it on his left hand and laid it on the floor. 

"He's going to bite you!" Nurse Red said.

Jimbo said nothing. He just waited.

Several long moments later and a sore back as well, Jimbo smiled as the mouse sniffed the air delicately, then made a roundbout path to his hand. It paused at the edge, expecting something bad to happen. It didn't. It grabbed the bread, then sat up eating the bread delicately a bit at a time, its eyes on Jimbo, watching him warily. When it finished the bread it sniffed at Jimbo's hand for more, then looked up into his eyes.

Jimbo smiled. "Hungry are we? Gotta get onto my hand if you want more."

The mouse, as if it understood, hopped on his hand and looked up again.

Jimbo reached back and brought out more bread and held it for the mouse. The mouse took it and munched away. Several moments later, it was stuffed and curled up into a ball in the palm of his hand and closed its eyes to sleep.

Jimbo sat up slowly, then looked at Red. "Probably some kid in the hospital's pet hamster."

He sat down on a chair and gently stroked the hamster, whose nose twitched, but didn't stir othewise.

Nurse Red got down off her chair and eyed him more closely. "You two are different."

"Ain't that the truth, sweetheart." He told her.

"I'd better make sure your partner's okay." She offered.

"Good idea. Wouldn't want the bed bugs to bite him or anything."

She snorted at the joke, then exited the waiting room.

Jimbo got more comfortable. "Well, Sammie, looks like we have a new friend."

When he woke up, his coat was wrapped around his shoulders and the hamster was still asleep, but now it was in his shirt pocket, its tiny heart beating against his. He popped open an eye to find Nurse Red watching him from the doorway. "I bet your neck is killing you."

Samuel woke up, feeling normal again. All the psychic bruises were healed. It usually took him about six to twelve hours to drop them, but this time had been worse because of the depth of the eneriges. That woman had powerful mojo, he thought to himself with the hint of a smile, which only showed his mood was returning back into its more normal channels. Positive and upbeat.

He felt his face and groaned. He had a stubble almost an inch long. Maybe  he'd been in the hospital longer than he thought.

"Three days." Jimbo said from the doorway, Nurse Red peeking over his right shoulder with a smile. She shoved around him and came inside with a tray filled with breakfast goodies. "I heard you were a vegetarian, so I dug up some veggies for you."

Samuel gave Jimbo the evil eye. Jimbo looked away, pretending not to notice.

Samuel looked at the bowl of carrots, olives, pickles, celery and lettuce and groaned inwardly. He hated pickles. Especially the green ones that were heaped so generously on the salad. He reached for the salad dressing and almost choked. "Apple Cider Vinegar."

He gave Jimbo another scathing glance, which was not lost to Nurse Red this time. "You two boys aren't being...you know..."

"Boys?" Jimbo asked with a grin.