The Headshrinker's Dilemma

Chapter Fifteen

He didn’t get far. Dale was only half way down the hall when he stopped. He thought about his life and all that he had lost. The Jamaican girl was the cause of it all. Yea, sure he had his own problems before but they were nothing like this, nothing like the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of being wanted by the police and being on the run. One wish, he thought. What if the Jamaican girl was telling the truth? What if he finished this mission he was on and he was indeed given one wish? That wish could be anything. If this was true, then there was a way out of this but… But he would have to kill the one person that he knew in his heart that he loved. Cashier girl.

Fuck. He thought about how he had already betrayed her. She had been shot helping him and he didn’t even know if she was okay or alive or not. He had abandoned her and had fallen into the Jamaican girl’s web of deception, so much so he had even had s*x with her. He wondered if that counted as cheating. He didn’t see why it wouldn’t. Him and Cashier girl had parted as boyfriend and girlfriend. He was also a cheater now. Something else the Jamaican girl had done to him. And now, after having gotten her shot, abandoning her, and cheating on her, he now had to kill her. How many more bad things was he going to be willing to do in order to save his own ass? f**k it. Dale went back to the Jamaican girl’s apartment.

At the apartment door, he hesitated, second guessing himself. He had started doing that again. Why was everything so fleeting? Finally, he decided not to knock. Instead he just walked right in. The Jamaican girl was on the floor crying. When she saw Dale come in, something in her lightened up some, she must have thought that he had changed his mind about her. He hadn’t. And he was going to make that very clear.

“You’ve ruined my life,” he said plainly.

“I know. I’m sorry – so sorry. I didn’t mean to –”

“Your intentions don’t mean s**t to me. What does is that you’re being honest with me now about this one wish thing.”

The Jamaican girl shot up to her feet. She faced Dale, her eyes still watery and if Dale could believe it or not, he thought he actually saw some remorse. He hadn’t seen that before, not really. Maybe losing him had done something to her, changed her.

“Dale, what happened between us… You –” she started.

“Stop. We can’t.”

“I’ve never experienced anything like that before. We made love –”

“Stop! You lied! This – This all was a lie. You had me believe a whole lot of s**t that – that was just crazy!”

The Jamaican girl ran to him. She pressed herself in front of him, barging into all of his personal space. He hadn’t realized how much taller he was than her. She peered up at him.

“Not all of it was a lie,” she spoke softly.

And Dale knew what she was referring to. Him and her. Maybe also the power to shrink heads. There had been things that were real. But it was the overall meaning and purpose that wasn’t and that for Dale was the backbone. He couldn’t just accept that things were how they were because of some silly girl’s wish to play voodoo priestess… f**k, who does that with peoples’ lives? It would have been better for her to have been the Devil or some demon than to have just ended up being some silly girl.

“We’re done. You got that? There’s no more us. Period. Okay?” said Dale.

The Jamaican girl stared wondrously at him. Everything was beginning to wear off and it only made him madder, angrier, he no longer could feel or read her thoughts. Rituals and concoctions. He cursed her to himself. But then a thought came to mind: he could really curse her! He had the ability to shrink heads! He could kill her. No. He could do her like Felicia and just let her be tormented. Dale looked her over one more time, he was ready to just do it. He salivated at the thought. No other person deserved it more. He was moments, minutes, seconds away from lifting his hands and putting them on her head… He could do it. She was right there in front of him, close to him, wanting to be next to him because she still believed that she had a chance. He could use that to his advantage, the proximity, and it would all be over before she knew it. And then he could go find Cashier girl and end this nightmare once and for all. Yes. Yes! That’s what had to be done…

***

It was a lonely walk from the Jamaican girl’s apartment to the park. That’s where he was going. He needed to collect his thoughts. It was cold outside, freezing, but there was something about the cold and frigid air and him just sitting in it on a day like this that appealed to him. He needed to get clarity and the park bench in the cold was just the place to do that – one of his favorite authors had done that and it changed his world. He hoped he would get lucky enough for that to happen for him. God knows he needed his world changed.

The walk over to the park had been a good one as well. He stayed tucked in his jacket and had his hat pulled down over his head to hide his face from passersby. Dale couldn’t take being seen and arrested. He had a mission that was way past imperative. He had to get to Cashier girl. He had to get to her in order to get them all out of the mess that they were in.

Dale sat down on the park bench. It was cold just like he knew it would be. His mind immediately began to unclog and he began working through just how he was going to go about getting everything that he needed to do done – finding Cashier girl and then killing her. He couldn’t believe that he was really going to kill the only girl he ever loved. It pained him to say that, knowing what he had done with the Jamaican girl, how he had betrayed his girlfriend, cheated on her with such a liar and the catalyst for all this mess and death. But he found solace in knowing that she had felt the same sting and tasted the same poison that had been meant for everyone else, especially poor Felicia. He relished and cherished that fact: the Jamaican girl was the new Felicia and God knew when someone would find her and her shrunken head in that apartment if he failed at what he was going to try to do. See, he had a plan. And it was a good one if he could execute it. However, it all hinged on what the Jamaican girl said as being the actual truth. Dale’s plan: Kill Cashier girl, get the one wish, and then wish that none of it ever happened. Sitting on the cold park bench in the dead of winter, his plan and the fact that he was concocting this plan sounded down right crazy. But crazy is as crazy does, he thought. Or something like that.

***

And so, Dale began walking towards the hospital. It was the only one in the area so Cashier girl had to be taken there. He knew what he had to do and ran over it again and again in his mind. His first option, Plan A, was to try to go about it in the most covert manner. He would be stealthy and try to sneak in, avoiding any face to face contact. He would be elusive and schematic in finding out where she was at in the hospital, if she was there at all, but she had to be because she’d been shot and there’s no way that they would have discharged her in one day. However, he knew that there was a good chance that there was a lot of police present and if that was the case then he would have to go with his next option, which was Plan B.

Dale had decided that if he couldn’t sneak his way in then he would bulldoze his way in and through everything and everyone that stood in his way. He was by no means any kind of specialized agent, and he definitely hadn’t been trained in any kind of martial arts or fighting techniques. None of that applied to him. What did apply to him, was that he had a fuckin’ strange ass super power and he was more than willing to use it now – to barrel through all the authorities if necessary to get to Cashier girl. Dale was ready. He would kill them all just to have a chance to reset everything.

Dale had arrived. The hospital loomed large in front of him, ominous and stark. Dale took a deep breath, pulled his cap down even lower, his hood over his head fully, and tucked down into his winter coat. He moved towards the hospital and his destiny.