The Happy Haven by James Gerard (e ink manga reader TXT) 📕

“Damn you Scott!  Why did you have to tell me all of that?”

Fear ran wild sending him racing to the elevator.  The access card slapped the panel and the command for the basement jabbed with a finger.

The elevator car filled with moaning and groaning, the sounds of fists punching at the doors, and the head banging against a wall.

“No” reverberated through the empty parking garage.  A hand darted in between the closing elevator doors forcing them to reopen.

“Come on!” he cried as the elevator seemed slow to respond.

The elevator doors opened.  Before the doorman came around the station he flew by him barreling through the main doors.

“Where?” screamed Bill.

Dumbfounded as to how to get back to Scott, he froze, then turned to the right and sprinted down the sidewalk.

Spotting a taxi cruising up the street, the arms went flailing as the voice cried out for its attention.

Panting heavily and with sweat beading all about the face he blurted out, “Do you know where a bar called The Happy Haven is?”

“The Happy Haven; yes,” the driver answered.

Bill hopped in the back and tossed a wad of one hundred dollar bills onto the front passenger seat.  “Get me there as fast as you can,” he begged.

The taxi burned rubber and sped ahead.  He kept pleading the driver to “hurry” as the taxi rocketed down the street darting in and out of traffic.

As the taxi slowed down and strayed towards the curb, Bill pushed the door open and leapt from the seat.  He tumbled violently onto the ground, then shot up straight and raced into the bar.  “Scott,” he roared, “where are you?  Show yourself right now!”

In an instant, the sound of laughter and idle talk fell into silence.  A few men jumped up and stepped to Bill as if to defend Scott against a raving lunatic. 

Scott came rushing up and shouted, “Everything is okay everybody.  He’s my friend.  He’s okay.  Please guys, just go back to your seats.  Everything is okay.”  He turned to the bartender, “Kitty, please, a round for all my friends on me.”

The men returned to their seats.  A few chuckles were heard.  Scott led Bill over to a table and calmly asked, “What’s wrong?”

Bill tapped his head on the table and muttered, “I don’t know.  Something is going on.  I can’t explain it.”

“Look at me,” said Scott.  “Does this have to do with what you guys are doing?”

“Yeah…maybe…I don’t know!”

“What is it you’re doing?”

“I can’t tell you,” Bill muttered.

“Then why are you here Bill?  What do you want me to do for you?”

“I just need an answer to something,” he wailed, “but I know there is no answer because it simply does not exist.”

“What doesn’t exist?  Tell me, what doesn’t exist?”

Bill leapt out of the chair and staggered around.  “Why did they do this to me?  Why did you tell me about the glass?”

Scott leapt out of the seat and shouted to the approaching patrons ready to pounce, “It’s still okay.  He’s just having a really bad day.  Please, go back to what you were doing.”   He then stepped up to Bill.  With hands reaching out and taking hold of the shoulders, he whispered, “Ah, now I understand my friend.”

Bill began to weep and moan.

“You’re having doubts aren’t you?”

“How can you doubt it all Scott?”

“Because one day Bill, with larger and larger accelerators, it occurred to me that we’ll keep on splitting particle after particle, remnants of particles from remnants of particles.”  Scott smiled.  “Isn’t it obvious Bill, we’ll keep searching until they discover nothingness.”

“That’s just stupid,” cried Bill.  “You’re crazy!”

“And when we find that nothingness, then we’re going to have to grapple with the notion that out of nothingness appeared all of this.”

“You can’t be serious?” cried Bill, “You don’t actually believe what I think you’re saying?”

“And why is doubt pestering you Bill?  Aren’t you a man with strong convictions?  Are you not unwavering in your view and your commitment to everything that you have been taught and have learned and have experienced and believed is the truth?    How could a little thing called ‘doubt’ bother your conscious?”

“You actually believe…you actually believe in God don’t you?” Bill yelled.  “You…you were blackballed not because you embarrassed your parents, you were blackballed because you actually believe in God?—you’ve rejected the truth.”

“How could the universe create itself out of nothingness?”

“Leave me alone,” Bill screamed as he backed away.

“What’s wrong?  Answer me?”

“Liar,” wailed Bill.  “You’re nothing but a drunk…drunk on lies.”

“Whatever you guys are up to he’ll never let you go through with it.”

“He doesn’t know!”

Scott waved off the men that seemed ready to attack.  He took a step forward towards Bill.

“Leave me alone,” he screamed.

“He knows Bill.”

“No he doesn’t,” he cried while stumbling into a barstool and crashing onto the floor.  “If he knew he would have done something already!”

“I’m telling you the truth Bill he knows.”

An adrenalin rush lifted Bill and he went blazing out the door.  “No he doesn’t!”

Bill flew down the sidewalk.  The rush of adrenalin blinded him to those strolling along the sidewalks and made the ears deaf to the pleas of those shouting out obscenities at him.  Eyes frantically searched for a taxi cruising along amidst the street bustling with traffic.

He ran into the road with arms waving at every passing car.  “Someone please help me.”  No one stopped.  The back of a bus was glimpsed out of a corner of the eye.  He sprinted in its direction.  “Stop…hey, stop!”  The bus continued to lumber up the road.  “Please stop.”

Eyes widened in reaction to the bus pulling up to the curb ahead.  He gazed at the line of people stepping on one by one and hollered out for attention.  Just as the last person stepped on the turn signal flashed and the brake lights disappeared.  The bus slowly crept into the lane.  Fists pounded the sides.  “Wait, please wait.”

The bus stopped immediately.  The door opened.  Bill stormed in a tossed a wad of cash onto the bus driver’s lap and begged for him “to go.”

“What are you looking at?” was shouted at the other riders as he plopped down on a seat at the very back.  “Stop it.”

The sight of familiar facades of buildings fronting the street served as beacons guiding him in the right direction.

The chord was yanked and the signal rang out.  Bill leapt to his feet and scurried past the passengers sitting quietly in the seats.  The bus sluggishly pulled to the curb and the door opened.  The building came into sight.  A mad dash down the sidewalk brought the escape to a close.

Secure in the confines of the suite, Bill fell onto the carpet.

 Bill stalked the suite looking for unsuspecting objects by which to unleash the fury.  A stool was flung at the face of the television shattering it to pieces.  The monitor was ripped from the laptop’s frame and slammed onto the carpet.  The entertainment center pushed to the floor.  The coffee and end tables and the lamps busted to pieces.  Cute little bric-a-brac made of fine crystal and porcelain were seized off of shelves and tables and hurled against the walls.  Rare paintings and portraits were ripped off the walls and torn to shreds.

All the light fixtures too were torn off of walls and ceilings.  Their guts of wire were yanked from the power source that fed them.  Appliances were overturned and kicked.  A paring knife shredded the leather covering the armchairs and sofas.  The knife also attacked the comforters and pillows and mattresses in all the bedrooms.  Toilets and vanities and mirrors of all shapes and sizes were shattered.  But the rage remained unquenched.

The thought of Scott’s useless opinions attacked Bill’s sense of the world as he knew it.  Out of blind hatred, a way to maintain a semblance of sanity was sought.  Scott's sentiments could only be heard as an attempt to stroke a fragile ego that had been so badly hurt by being deemed susceptible to such religious nonsense, then separated from a world that he was born into, and lastly, forced into exile and cut off from further feasting on the fruits of the good life.  As far as he was concerned, Scott was no more than an immature, spoiled little brat who wanted everything his way even if it meant foregoing the scientific facts that explained the mysteries of the universe.

More hurtful than that, thought Bill, was the absolute idiotic request of the others that had reached its boiling point.  How they could even be enticed, joke or no joke, to prove or disprove the ridiculous subject.  Such foolery went beyond his logic.

Despite the logic, it abruptly became apparent by violating the terms of the contract they planned to keep the finished work away from those that had made it possible.

“And of course they had to make me go about providing specifics,” Bill screamed.

Impulses to rat them out coursed through the conscious.  Just one phone call and the mention of a glaring breach of protocol would send an assault team storming into the lab firing at will at anything that moved.  The only question that halted the hand from reaching into a pocket was that of his fate.  Bill struggled to pinpoint the possible consequences.  The disclosure could result in a lifetime of rewards for squealing on the others, or it could mean death as a punishment for simply being a member of the team?  

His face contorted into a malicious grin in visualizing Kevin and Terry gunned down like the nasty pieces of work they were.  Bill took no pleasure at the thought of Paul meeting the same fate.  As much as he hated to do so, the murderous thought was tempered.  But with just one last second to indulge in the fantasy, just the mere thought of knowing they would meet a cruel and violent end smoldered deep in the consciousness.

The remnant of a crystal figurine was smashed into a remaining shard of glass that was the coffee table.

“Why Scott?”

A rapid pace through the apartment continued.  He kicked and punched through the walls squared off with thick sections of sheet rock and at any electrical receptacle that had yet to sample the bitter taste of fury unleashed in an orgy of physical violence.  The violence brought with it a reality never dreamed of or considered even in the most vague way.

“What if it’s true?” cried Bill as legs buckled and knees hit the ground.  “No!” he screamed into the carpet.  “Stop it,” he begged as the comfort found in his science crumbled before his very eyes.  “It can’t be,” he wept pounding a fist on the floor.

The simple quest for a simple answer was now a curse that plagued the mind with blinding pain. Lost on a road of confusion, he found no outlet from the oppressive reign and was left at the mercy of a tyrannical thought that wielded its rule with a crushing weight of misery.

A primordial scream filled the suite with horrific noise.  Bill sprang up and made a dash for the door.  The access card was slammed against the panel by a trembling hand.  A tight fist punched the elevator button, and as soon as it opened reached around and slapped the card to the access panel and hit the button