Transcendence - A New Beginning

Chapter Six

"No. I don't really believe that you think that. Yet, Maybe? Maybe you thought this was just a silly game? Uhmmm..." the voice on the other end of the receiver trailed off. His calm tone served its intent, to stir him into panic followed by complacency. "Could it be that you thought there were no harmful side effects to this particular therapy?" His laugh was low and cutting.

Arnold stared blankly out the office window in a state of hypo-panic. His mind raced through possible scenarios, every single combination possible within a matter of minutes if not seconds. They would kill his wife, maybe do so in front of him. They might even start killing off members of his family, although that could eventually be traced. If they killed more employees it would cast state then federal attention on the business, so he reversed that thought. They might kill him and Kim since they were both involved heavily, to silence them both and create vacancies with which they could assume total control over the business. That was the fastest, cleanest answer, and conveyed the message to others within their sphere that they were to be taken deadly seriously.

"Yes. This is a good time to evaluate your options. How do you say...Perform a Cost-Benefit Analysis?" He laughed deeply and cruelly at this before he disconnected the call.

Arnold gathered his jacket, told his secretary that he would be leaving early for the day and walked, like a dead man, out of the building to his BMW in the parking lot. He would have to tell his wife about the phone call, the truth that the pharmacist's death was in fact murder and that they were both complicit in it. If he passed anyone, he didn't know and didn't care as his mind registered nothing of his surroundings. His eye caught no glimpse of the light orbs that surrounded him. A keen-eyed observer would have seen strange refractions of sunlight all around him. They might even have thought it was divinely inspired, had they been so inclined.

This, of course, was not the case. Not even close.

His heartbeat raced as he approached the off-ramp that emptied into the connecting street. This was where she died. His subconscious mind replayed the deadly events as they were reported earlier. Would that be his fate? If not now, then just delayed to some future date? Would it drag out, be agonizing...what? As he entered the street, his mind turned to an old, desperate thought he had often toyed with over the past couple of years. If he killed himself in an accident, not only would Kim collect some insurance money, but all the debts against the corporation would be sold. Her name was only on one non-divested business and the house.

She would be free of these guys and, if she kept her mouth shut, would be able to start anew quite easily and debt free. The idea was comforting only in that it gave him a sense of control over the path their life had taken. He fantasized that this one final sacrificing act that only he could perform would release her from a mutually inflicted life of bondage forever.

In his distraction, he didn't see the stop sign until it was too late.

It didn't matter. The streets were deserted this time of day. He drove on.

He was still planning his accidental suicide when he drove to the end of a Birch tree-lined cul-de-sac onto the long driveway that leads to their secluded home half an hour later. As he approached the house, his guilt-ridden imagination morphed the cedar sided cape, with its large bay window and wraparound porch into a dark, menacing, blood-stained thing built by corruption and murder. He turned off the car's ignition and stared through the front windshield allowing his mind to clear as he scanned the yard. He needed to call the landscaper to cut the lawn again this week. But then again, maybe that can wait.

Maybe everything can just simply wait.

What would he tell his wife? He assumed she heard the news of the accident and therefore may know more about the details of the pharmacist's death than even he did. But the information he was about to divulge might induce panic and hysteria. The worst part for him was that he could no longer refuse that within some deep core he knew what he had signed up for. His subconscious wasn't letting him pass through this state of shock because it had a lesson it wanted him to learn. That they, he, had accepted the probability of a colleague's murder in exchange for the promise of financial solvency.