Volume One: The Road Out
Chapter One
Verse Seven: The Story
Marion stood frozen, his finger touching the cracked and drying blood on his lip. His mind tried to catch up with itself as it ran in circles inside his head screaming absurd theories and panicking.
"Okay, Option number one is that I bit my lip during the hallucination. And I guess it matches the scene from the dream world so well because my sick tumour ridden brain incorporated me biting my lip into the hallucination, because you know, it's considerate like that. Option number two is that I just dived head first into a less PG-13 version of the tales of Narnia, only without the wardrobe and the Lion Messiah analogue," Marion paused in mid monologue and noticed people were staring at him, he debated trying to hide, but discarded the idea and kept talking. He needed to clear his head more than he needed to look normal to strangers at this point.
"Of course option three would be that both things are true. I have a nasty brain tumour that is psychically teleporting me into a Narnia world where I can be a hero as my brain dies. Given the life I'm living, I could deal with that. The question then would be whether I stay in the Narnia land, with it's cannibal monsters and paranoid villagers after I die or the window is only temporarily open due to my occasionally amusing brain sickness?"
He paused again.
"There are probably other options, but I can't think of them right now. I can ask Harley later, he'll think of all the boring reasonable options. Harley!"
Marion tipped his head down to look at his cell phone, now sitting on the concrete walkway beneath his feet. He bent down and picked it up cautiously. The phone thankfully appeared to merely be scratched and not broken entirely- Marion could not afford to replace it if it broke. Harley's call had dropped. Marion noted that the phone was displaying seven new text messages. Marion opened his text messages, they were all from Harley.
<<Marion are you still there? I can't hear you but there's still sound on the phone.>>
<<Marion are you ok?>>
<<What's happening? Talk to me>>
<<You've got me worried. text back.>>
<<Marion>>
<<MARION!>>
<<Marion can you hear me? Do you need help? Marion when is your break over?>>
Marion's shoulders sagged as he read the last text. He looked at the time listed on the phone, he'd been in dreamland for at least twenty five minutes. His break was fifteen minutes. He was late. Again.
Marion quickly tapped out a text to Harley.
<<I'm ok. Late. Again. Hallucinated again. I'll tell you later. So screwed. I'm never lucky.>>
Marion considered his options. He could sneak back and hope that he hadn’t been missed. Or he could just tell Mr. Wheately that he had just made a pact to save the children of a lady from a magical village inside one of Marion’s hallucinations. Sneak and and hope that nobody had noticed seemed like the better option. If he was lucky, but that seemed like a bad thing to think about just at that moment. Marion darted back into the building and walked as casually as he could to his section while also staying out of clear view of other employees. Marion kept alert for any glimpse of the tall razor shaped profile of Mr. Wheately.
Marion finally reached the literature section, and with Mr. Wheately nowhere nearby and no anywhere in sight, Marion allowed himself a brief thought that maybe his luck wasn’t getting any worse. Marion truly loved bookstores, even big box commercialized cookie cutter bookstores like Allons-Y Books. Bookstores were quiet; almost like a library, although a bookstore was never that quiet. Marion took a moment to breathe in the silence, the quiet spaces in the air that gave Marion room to think. And then into that silence clamoured the sounds of a male and female voice rising in argument.
"This is not the time or the place, and neither is it your place to discuss your female objections to my business activities. Know your role in the grand scheme and keep to it Mary." The man's voice was loud, but he wasn't yelling. Marion knew that voice from University, he had heard it in the throat's of many tenured professors who didn't have a counter argument, but didn't agree with the student's assessment. Whoever Mary was, she was on the receiving end of an authority lecture. Marion also knew that if the fight got out of hand Mr. Wheately would somehow find a way to blame Marion for it. That seemed to be how the game was being played today at any rate. Marion strode through the shelves, honing in on the argument, hoping to placate the fighting couple before Mr. Wheately decided that this argument somehow showed something unemployable about Marion.
"Do you want to know what is my place Darius? My place is, as you so love to tell me, raising our children right. How am I going to raise them right when they watch you destroy lives for a few more dollars? How am I going to tell that it's important to be a moral and ethical person when their father is willing to gouge out an open pit mine in the middle a protected park on indigenous land by using the loophole of setting up a fake tribal council to approve your project? How do I tell them that morality is important when there father does that?"
"It's not a fake council, the local governments: both federal and municipal have recognized that tribal council as valid. And do you think that the world keeps turning without raw material? Do you think our comfortable existence with my lovely car and that amazing house you get to raise our children in are possible without the materials needed to build them? THey come from somewhere Mary, you just don't like to look at the process."
Marion rounded the corner and saw the people who were arguing. The man was imposing and dressed in a white on white suit with a crimson tie. He hair was a rich auburn streaked with grey. Two children, a girl with black hair who looked about nine years old and a boy with auburn hair who looked about thirteen years old stood behind the woman. Marion recognized the woman instantly as the woman from his hallucination.
"Morrigan?" He asked in surprise.
The family turned and they all looked at him in confusion, the man named Darius scowled, and the woman looked at Marion with an expression that told him instantly that she didn't know him. But he still knew her. Her hair was black with the same single strip of white. She was dressed in modern clothing, but all black with bird shaped patterns along the edges. This woman was Morrigan, Marion was sure of it. What he was to do know though, Marion had no idea.
"I'm sorry to interrupt. Can I help you folks find anything?"
"Yes," the woman said, " You can help my husband find your business ethics section. Meanwhile, I am looking for the works of Chinua Achebe. Do you know where his books are located?"
"My grasp of business and of ethics are perfect. Perhaps if you ran a business and had some income of your own, you would understand the realities of business and ethics on the ground." Darius said.
"I stayed home to raise the kids on your insistence you hypocrite. And I gave up a promising career to do so."
As the two began to argue again the girl pull on her mother's dress, "Mom. The Dreamer is here. He's here to help."
Marion looked at the little girl in shock.
"You have come to help, right?"
Darius stopped talking and looked back at Marion. "Of course he is. That's why we came in here. You should help them find the books Maia wants and then we can leave. It was Maia's idea to come here. So once we have her books, we can be on our way. We can continue this discussion in private, where family matters should remain."
Marion's mind raced, but he calmed himself back into bookseller mode, "You're in the right area for Chinua Achebe, it's sorted by last name in the Literature section. But I don't know that we'll have much of his work besides 'Thing's Fall Apart', the store tends to only stock things that have pop culture visibility," He turned to the little girl named Maia, "And what book did you want help finding?"
The little girl looked up and him, "Do you have any copies of 'Twelve Years a Slave'? Or what about Nelson Mandela's autobiography?"
"How old are you?" Marion asked.
"Nine. Why?"
"Those are heavy books. That's a great reading level for your age if your reading those books. Heavy subjects too, they're both about people who were unjustly imprisoned."
"Did you put her up to asking for those books?" Darius said, his voice rising to dangerous levels. He took a step closer to Mary and loomed over her in a way that made Marion suspect he might strike her. Marion quickly squeezed between them arms up.
"Kids are perceptive," Marion said quickly, "The whole store can tell you two are having difficulties, and your daughter is going to hear this at home too. If she's trying to send a message, maybe you should listen."
"How dare you! Do you know who I am? I am Darius Salt, and I could buy and sell you."
A little voice in Marion's head told him that this was not the situation he needed to be in right now. That little voice told him to back off, and to apologize and let the fight continue. Out of the corner of his vision, Marion could see Mr. Wheately leaning back against a bookshelf watching. Marion knew that how this ended would say a lot about his future at the company.
"Please help us." Maia said quietly. Marion wasn't sure if anyone else heard her. But Marion heard her.
"Then, Mr. Salt. Perhaps that says a lot more about why your daughter chose those books than anything her mother could have told her to say. Because, I you treat your business interests anything like you treat your family, your grasp of ethics would make Ebeneezer Scrooge shake his head at the disgrace of it."
Mr. Wheately seemed to materialize beside Marion as he finished speaking, "My name is Wheately, sir. I'm store manager. Can I be of some assistance?"
Darius Salt stood with his mouth open and stared at Marion for a moment. He tried to speak and made no sound. He opened his mouth a second time, but no words emerged. Maia giggled and finally Darius Salt found his voice again.
"Yes you can be of some assistance. Fire this employee."
"It would be my pleasure sir."
Marion smiled and shook his head, "At least I earned it."
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