The Other Thing

It’s like this: I wake up nearly every morning in the bed I share with my wife. After devoting a religious moment to appreciating the stunning, loving woman beside me, I ease off the mattress and pick my way across the minefield of creaks and groans in the old farmhouse’s wooden floor. I slip into the hall and head for the guest bathroom two doors down—the one with the quietest toilet flush in the house. I take care of essential business, then pull up to the mirror. The face offers no surprises. I give it a moment, then picture a set of levers in my head—part of the throttle-prop-mixture quadrant on a twin-engine Piper Navajo. The levers I imagine are to the right, a fourth set not found on any airplane, topped with classic round balls. I see them fully retracted, pulled toward me, the pilot. My eyes are open—it makes no difference—I can see the levers either way. I close my hand on them. I push. They move smoothly and swiftly to the forward stops. Balls to the wall. 

For a split second I wonder, as I did the day before, and the day before that, if this trick will work again. Then—

Fwooomp!

—I hear it. A deep and breathy sound—like the air being sucked out of a room. I’ve learned that the sound is audible only in my head.

A cool sensation flashes over my skin. The first dip in a farm pond after a hot, dusty day. The shift of an evening breeze after sunset.

I vanish. 

I see myself disappear in the mirror. Bleary eyes and tossed hair wink out and the shower curtain behind me—the one with the frogs on it— fills in where my head had been. As soon as I see those frogs, my feet leave the cold tile floor. My body remains solid, but gravity and I are no longer on speaking terms. I begin to float. A stiff breeze will send me on my way if I don’t hang on to something.

The routine never varies. I’ve tested it nearly every morning since I piloted an air charter flight down the RNAV 31 Approach to Essex County Airport but never made the field. I have no memory of the crash. The running theory is that I collided with something in midair. I have dreams of hitting something, but I’m not sure if the dreams come from the event or were suggested afterward. In the dreams, everything is peachy until something—it’s just a hole in the sky—tears the airplane apart under me. Evidence suggests I fell more than five hundred feet and landed in a marsh, sitting in the pilot’s seat. That’s where the Essex Volunteer Fire Department found me. 

Since the night of the crash, whenever I picture that set of levers in my mind and I push them fully forward, I vanish. Pull them back, and I reappear. 

It may kill me.

That doesn’t scare me.

Far darker things greet the dawn every day.

Propulsion

From DIVISIBLE MAN - THE SIXTH PAWN

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

My wife stood, arms folded, lower lip extended, long legs planted—the trifecta of skepticism.

“I’ve already tested it. It works.”

Andy took the SCUZ from my hand and turned it over in her own. She rolled her eyes and heaved a faithless sigh. “This? Will, you told me your biggest fear with the other thing is to wind up too high, unable to stop. That doing it outdoors scared you.”

“Which is why I made these.”

“Okay, let’s go back to problem number one with you using it. Nothing dangerous. We agreed on that.”

I didn’t remember agreeing to anything.

“How is this dangerous?”

She held up the silly-looking little unit. “Really? You’re going to bet your life on flashlight batteries?” A lock of hair fell across one eye, a warning flag.

“C’mon, Dee, you know I can do this.”

She brushed the hair back. She turned the small device over in her hand.

“What do you call this stupid thing?”

“A SCUZ,” I said proudly.

“What?”

“Self-Contained Unit for Zooming.”

“Oh, you are not calling it that.” She tossed it back at me and stalked away from the garage, leaving me grinning.