"Dream" - Part 3

If you're just jumping in to this old short story that I wrote, you will probably want to start from the beginning.  Reading this part, and then the preceding parts, may give you a wonderfully unique experience, somewhat like the first viewing of the movie "Memento".  However, many people do not enjoy reading books backwards.

Part 1 can be found here.  Part 2 can be found here.

            A week later we got a new manager at our firm.  Her name was something Agrona.  I don't remember the first name.  It wasn't important.  She was very well credited, supposed to be a great asset, I supposed.  It didn't matter.  I recognized her.  I had seen her a week ago in the alley.  Her hair was dyed, but it was the same woman. 

            I hadn't told anyone about what had happened.  I had gone back to the alley.  There hadn't been any pile.  There had been a red splotch on the ground, just another stain among countless others.  There was nothing else.

            Her shirt was low enough to tell that there was no scar where there should have been one.  Her eyes were a light blue color.  They were dull.

            I guess I must have been going crazy, even then.  If I am crazy at all.  I don't think that I'm crazy, but that's just my perspective.  If I knew that I was crazy, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all, would we?

            I tried not to talk to her.  Whenever I saw her, I felt like those dull eyes were reading me, as if they knew what I had seen.  I tried to stay away, keeping to my work.  I met a woman whose son had been raped.  I told her she might be able to get a six figure settlement.

           

            It went on for two months before I couldn't take it anymore.  You know about what happened already from here on.  It's all in the police reports.  Or at least most of it is.  It talks about how I cornered her in an office after hours, about how I had a gun and threatened her.

            She told me stuff, although none of it helped anything.  Most didn't even make sense.  It was all this fancy talk about replacement, and sustenance, and replenishment, and energy funnels, and decay.  The one word that stuck with me from it all was entropy.  I don't know what she was using it to talk about, but it's the one that most stands out.

            The police came before I could do anything but listen.  I don't know how they found out; we were alone, it was after hours, and there wasn't any alarm that went off.  I think I know how, though.  They all had the same flat eyes.  They were all dull.

            As they were trying to pull me down, I shot her.  I remember shooting her.  I hit her twice, once in the chest and once on the side of the forehead.  There were only trickles of blood that came out, as if the rest was already gone.  No one seemed to notice that she had been shot.  She didn't have any wounds when she testified.

            You don't believe me, do you?  It makes sense, though.  I'm still not sure whether I believe myself.  It doesn't even seem real, somehow.  There are these . . . others . . . walking among us?  It sounds like something out of a science fiction paperback.

            It would almost be easiest to think that I really was going crazy, and that I made it all up.  I've been let out on a few visits, these last few months.  Every time I go out, I see more and more people with dull eyes.  Maybe it's not anything.

            Even you, Doctor.  Even you've got dull eyes.

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