Random Man

RANDOM MAN
a novel by Dan Garson
Dark Fantasy · approximately 156,000 words

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
—John Milton, Paradise Lost

Chapter 1 — The City Woke Up Crooked

The city woke up crooked.

Todd Ransom noticed it before the coffee finished dripping, before the radio finished warming itself into music, before the sun had climbed high enough to pretend the day was going to behave.

It was not a dramatic crookedness, the sort most people would never notice. The intersection two blocks from his house had always leaned slightly to the west, but this morning the traffic lights seemed to hesitate, pausing just long enough for the wrong cars to go first. A delivery truck rolled through the yellow without consequence. A pedestrian stepped confidently into the crosswalk at precisely the moment three lanes of cars stopped as if rehearsed.

Todd stood at the kitchen window with a mug in one hand and the quiet, uncomfortable sense that the world had just tripped over itself and pretended it meant to do that.

He had experienced this feeling before.

Not often.

But often enough to recognize the peculiar aftertaste of it.

A coincidence that behaved like a decision.

Behind him the small kitchen radio clicked into life and the opening guitar riff of Rush's "Tom Sawyer" filled the room. Todd glanced over his shoulder and smiled faintly. It had its own personality and an unhealthy bias toward progressive rock. Todd did not remember setting the station.

He sipped his coffee.

The coffee was terrible.

Todd believed good coffee required patience and attention, and he had neither at six-thirty in the morning. The grounds had been scooped carelessly, the filter slightly folded, the water poured with the indifference of a man who had accepted mediocrity in certain corners of his life.

He walked to the kitchen counter and opened the cabinet above the stove.

Inside sat a small row of tins.

Silver, blue, and gold labels arranged with more care than the rest of the kitchen received.

Portuguese anchovies.

The good ones.

Ramirez.

Jose Gourmet.

Pinhais.

Todd reached for the Ramirez tin automatically, then stopped himself halfway through the motion.

It was too early for anchovies.

Even he understood that.

Still, the habit remained. Anchovies had become one of those strange private rituals that attached themselves to a person over time, like the records he collected or the sweatpants he wore inside out without realizing it until someone pointed it out.

The quiet would not last long.

It lasted four minutes.

Lola appeared in the kitchen doorway in scrubs and the expression she reserved for mornings she considered insufficiently organized, which was most of them. She was carrying a highlighter and a textbook the size of a geological survey and had already achieved the focused energy of someone running fifteen minutes ahead of everyone else in the building.

She looked at Todd.

Then at his sweatpants.

"Inside out."

"Thank you. I'll file that under things I already know."

"Fifteen years," she said, moving past him to the refrigerator. "Fifteen years and the same sweatpants problem. Do you want me to write you a prescription, Toad?"

"For what?"

"Self-awareness."

She pulled out the orange juice, poured a glass, and leaned against the counter with the comfortable authority of having grown up in this kitchen and intending to stay opinionated about it indefinitely.

Beulah arrived.

Beulah moved through the kitchen with the steady confidence of someone who had been managing other people's domestic disasters long enough to develop opinions about all of them. She wore a faded floral apron and carried herself with the mild authority of a general who had chosen culinary logistics as her theater of operations. She had come to work for them fifteen years ago, two weeks after the funeral, and had never once made a production of that fact. Todd had been eighteen. Lola had been seven. Beulah had simply arrived and never left.

"Your coffee smells like regret," she said without looking at Todd.

"That's an aggressive way to greet someone before breakfast."

"It is honest."

She opened the refrigerator and removed a carton of eggs.

"You are standing wrong," she added.

"I'm standing wrong?"

"Yes."

Todd looked down.

His sweatpants were inside out again.

He sighed.

"That's a design feature."

"It is a cry for help."

Lola pointed at Todd with her highlighter. "She's not wrong."

Beulah cracked three eggs into a bowl and whisked them with mechanical efficiency. She moved with the calm rhythm of a person who had already decided what the morning would become and did not intend to negotiate with it.

"What are you making?" Todd asked.

"Your favorite."

He leaned against the counter.

"Dangerous words."

Beulah took down the Ramirez tin.

Todd straightened immediately.

"You're making an anchovy omelette?"

"You like anchovies."

"I do. But that doesn't mean they should be involved in breakfast."

"You ate them at breakfast last week."

"That was an experiment."

Lola looked at the tin, then at Todd, then back at the tin. "You willingly eat anchovies before nine in the morning and you're questioning my diagrams."

"Nobody is questioning your diagrams. Nobody said anything about diagrams."

"Not yet," Lola said pleasantly.

Todd watched her. She'd been auditing his life since she was nine, and saw no reason to stop now.

"You're doing the thing," she said.

"What thing."

"The thing where you stand in your own kitchen like you're a guest who hasn't been offered a seat yet."

"I live here."

"Debatable." She took a drink of her orange juice. "You've been staring at that intersection for six minutes. You haven't touched your coffee. Your sweatpants are inside out for the third time this week and you appear to be unaware of all three of these facts simultaneously."

"I'm aware of the sweatpants."

"Are you."

"They're a design choice."

Lola looked at him over the rim of her glass with the expression she reserved for patients who insisted they were fine while holding a broken arm.

"Todd," she said.

"Yeah."

"You're allowed to just tell me when something's wrong."

He looked at the intersection. "Nothing's wrong."

"Okay," she said, in the tone that meant she was filing it under pending and would return to it with documentation.

Beulah ignored both of them and opened the tin.

The smell arrived first.

Sharp, salty, unmistakable.

Todd's stomach arrived at its usual negotiated settlement with anchovies: anticipation and regret, present simultaneously, neither willing to leave.

The eggs hit the pan.

Butter melted.

The omelette formed.

Todd leaned closer despite himself.

Outside the window the city moved normally again.

Cars passed. A jogger ran by with headphones on. Somewhere down the street a dog barked at nothing in particular.

Everything looked ordinary.

Then Beulah added the anchovies.

The moment they touched the eggs the kitchen light flickered.

Todd looked up.

Beulah paused.

The pan crackled.

The light flickered again.

Todd felt something move through him.

Not pain.

Not heat.

Something stranger.

A sudden pressure behind his ribs, as if a second heartbeat had arrived uninvited and was trying to synchronize with the first.

He opened his mouth to say something.

The kitchen exploded into chaos.

Not violently.

Not loudly.

But decisively.

The toaster launched two pieces of bread across the counter as if offended by gravity. A spoon jumped from the sink and clattered against the wall. The radio surged louder for half a second, switching abruptly from Rush to Iron Maiden's "Can I Play With Madness" before settling back again.

Beulah began to disappear.

Not all at once. That was the part that would stay with Todd. The edges of her went first—the outline of her shoulders softening, the sharp border between apron and air becoming uncertain. Then her height dropped, the geometry of her changing in stages like a building being demolished floor by floor, the reality of her renegotiating its terms with the available space.

The mug stopped halfway to his mouth. Coffee ran over his knuckles, and he didn't feel it.

"...Beulah?" he said.

Todd blinked.

He made himself blink again.

Where Beulah had been standing now stood a small, furious Chihuahua.

It was wearing the apron.

This detail struck Todd as somehow worse than all the others.

The dog stared up at him with the specific expression of a person who has been deeply inconvenienced and intends to remember it. Its ears were flat. Its nostrils were flared. One tiny paw rested on the fallen spatula with the energy of a woman who had dropped it against her will and considered that a personal affront.

The Chihuahua barked.

It was not a normal bark. It was clipped, precise, and carried within it the unmistakable emotional register of someone who had strong opinions about kitchen hygiene and was appalled by what had just happened to her morning.

Todd had heard that exact sound before.

Every time he left a cabinet door open.

"Beulah?" he said.

The Chihuahua's eyes narrowed.

Todd placed both hands on the counter very slowly.

"Well," he said carefully.

"That's new."

From the hallway Lola's voice arrived at the careful, measured volume she used when assembling a rational explanation for something that had not yet earned one.

"Todd."

"Yeah."

"The housekeeper is a dog."

"I'm aware."

A pause long enough to contain an entire argument with herself.

"That is not—" She stopped. "There is no physiological mechanism by which—" She stopped again. He could hear her sorting through categories, opening doors, finding nothing applicable, closing them again with increasing force. "Dogs don't just—"

"Lola."

"—appear. Where people were. That is not a thing that—"

"Lola."

"I went to college," she said, as if this were relevant. "I'm in medical school. I have a working understanding of biology and I am telling you that what I am currently looking at is not—"

"I know."

"—biologically consistent with—"

"I know."

"—anything."

"I know." Todd looked at the Chihuahua. The Chihuahua looked back at him. "I'm working on a theory."

Lola appeared in the doorway. She stared at the dog, then at Todd, then crouched and stared again with the focused intensity of someone running a differential diagnosis on a creature that should not exist.

"It's wearing the apron," she said.

"Yes."

"Why is it wearing the apron?"

"I don't know."

"Todd." She looked up at him. "Why is Beulah a dog."

And something in the way she said it—not panicked, not angry, just that precise medical flatness that meant she had moved past disbelief into a place that required actual answers—hit Todd somewhere underneath the amusement.

He looked at Beulah.

Really looked.

Beulah, who had worked in this house for fifteen years. Who had strong opinions about cabinet doors and terrible coffee and the precise way a pan should be seasoned. Who had arrived with a casserole dish and a look that said she was not going anywhere, and had never once gone anywhere.

Who was currently a twelve-pound dog in a floral apron staring up at him with an expression that contained, beneath the outrage, something that looked uncomfortably like trust.

Oh no, Todd thought.

Oh no, I did this.

The pressure behind his ribs shifted.

Not outward this time.

Inward.

Like something that had been holding its breath decided to let it go.

The kitchen light steadied.

The air stopped feeling like weather.

And Beulah rebuilt herself.

Todd watched it happen in reverse—the Chihuahua's outline softening at the edges the same way it had softened going down, the geometry renegotiating upward, height returning in stages, the apron reappearing, the spatula materializing back in her hand with the specific inevitability of a thing Beulah had decided to keep. The whole process took perhaps two seconds and was one of the most unsettling things Todd had ever seen, which was a sentence that was going to require significant revision in the coming weeks.

Beulah was simply Beulah again—full height, full apron, spatula in hand, standing in the exact spot she had occupied before, with the expression of a woman who had just experienced something she intended never to discuss and fully expected the omelette to be salvageable.

She looked down at the pan.

She looked at Todd.

"The eggs are ruined," she said.

Todd stared at her.

"That's what you're leading with?"

"Someone," she said, with enormous dignity, "let the heat get away."

She opened the cabinet, removed the Ramirez tin, and began again.

Lola stood in the doorway with both hands pressed flat against the frame as if the building might otherwise tip.

"She just—" Lola pointed. "You just—" She pointed at Todd. "The dog—" She pointed at where the dog had been. She lowered her arm. She raised it again. She lowered it.

"I have a lecture at eight," she said finally.

"Okay," Todd said.

"We are going to talk about this."

"I know."

"At length."

"I assumed."

"With a detailed anatomical diagram," she said, "illustrating the physiological distinctions between a sixty-year-old Portuguese woman and a Chihuahua. Because apparently that is a conversation we now need to have."

"That seems excessive."

"Todd." She looked at him with the full weight of someone who had just watched the rules of observable reality take a personal day. "Diagrams."

"Get some rest first, Low Life," Todd said. "You look like you need it."

She looked at him. "I was fine until three minutes ago."

"You were fine until two minutes ago when Beulah was a dog. I'm counting that separately."

"I'm aware of what I said, Toad." She raised one finger. "Diagrams."

She turned and walked back down the hallway with the posture of someone holding their entire medical education together by will alone.

Todd exhaled.

Beulah cracked two fresh eggs into the bowl without comment.

Todd watched her work.

"Beulah."

"Mm."

"You know you were a dog for about two seconds."

"I am aware of what I was." She whisked the eggs with the same mechanical efficiency as before, as if the interruption had been a minor traffic delay. "You were a problem long before today."

Todd leaned against the counter. "What does that mean?"

Beulah did not look up. "Third grade. Your teacher called your mother. Said you kept switching your pencil between hands during spelling tests and she thought you were doing it to be difficult."

"I wasn't doing it to be difficult. I didn't know which hand was the right one."

"She hit the left one with a ruler." Beulah said this without drama, the way she reported all facts she found distasteful—flatly, once, with the implicit expectation that the listener would do the work of being appalled. "You switched to the right without missing a word. She told your mother it was unnatural."

Todd considered this. "She wasn't wrong."

"She was small-minded." Beulah tipped the bowl toward the pan. "Your mother told me she went home and bragged about it to your father. That their boy had outsmarted the ruler." A pause that contained something close to warmth, though Beulah would not have called it that. "He laughed for a long time."

Todd was quiet for a moment.

"Kickball was worse," he said.

"Kickball was a disaster," Beulah agreed, without sympathy. "You stood over that ball for so long the other children thought you'd forgotten the rules."

"I hadn't forgotten the rules. I just couldn't decide which foot."

"You fell over."

"I fell over," Todd confirmed. "Before I kicked it."

"Before you kicked it," Beulah said. "Yes." She folded the omelette with a practiced turn of the wrist. "Lola still tells that story at Christmas."

"I know she does."

"She does impressions."

"I know."