Chapter 1

Well, I guess you could say I was up shit creek without a paddle in a bottomless canoe, but that wouldn't be descriptive enough for my situation. Denise, lovely gal that she is, left. Denise ... she was five foot eight, had green eyes and Auburn hair, a 36C chest and probably the tastiest poontang around. She went on a road trip with her friend to Memphis in our relatively new Nissan Sentra. It was baby blue. I really liked that car, a lot! I was stuck driving the POS Fiat. That was the last time I saw her. I was left in Dallas high and dry. Four years, two months and twenty six days. Life sucks, then you die.

I was all feeling sorry for myself so to cheer me up I had a yard sale. I didn't have a garage, living in an apartment, so I had a garage sale. Sold everything, right down to her used panties some old fart offered 5 bucks for. Snapped that sawbuck up quick. I made a whole 1997.33 on the sale. Dumpster got what didn't sell. I then skipped out on the lease since they never give back deposits anyway. And besides she'd paid it out of her earnings. Rented a box at the corner mail drop store. Forwarded my mail there, ordered hers to go back to sender. I didn't care.

Now I'm one of those guys that likes garage sales. They are like a box of chocolates, you never know... (yeah, I saw Forrest Gump, too). Anyway back to my tale of woe. A couple months or so after my big sale and move out, I decided it was time to visit the Irving neighborhoods for sales. I'd hit a lot of different places, always sticking to good neighborhoods to get a better class of junk. Today I was working areas of Irving. I'd just left an advertised sale on Mitchell when scanning the ads, I noticed an estate sale over on Park Place. What the heck, estate sales had the best weird stuff around, so I high tailed it over there as fast as my Virago could get me, without getting me a ticket. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I found a sucker for the Fiat and picked up a 1984 Yamaha Virago, cherry condition! Now I had good transportation. Yeah, it still had the crappy starter glitch, but if I tipped the bike left, I could get it to catch and away I'd go.

I pulled into the drive, there was room for the bike, at about 11:30 that Saturday morning. There were a bunch of people sorting through boxes and checking out the furniture that had been placed around. The guy in the tie was running the show and he had three or four assistants, in bright colored t-shirts assisting customers. His cashier must have come with the house. She didn't look a day under 80. I figured I'd look inside first, so I mounted the steps two at a time and then strolled in. There was more furniture inside; every room was stuffed with furniture and boxes of stuff. It would take three weeks of searching to go through all this stuff.

I wandered through the rooms, looking in drawers of the cabinets, examining boxes of stuff. The place was old and musty. It had a distasteful odor, too. In the room past the kitchen was where I found it. The room looked like a bedroom, but it had a hodge podge of stuff. There was a bureau there that was old. Looking at the bottom, I found the makers mark. Sullivans, Grand Rapids, 1923. This was a real piece of furniture, not the usual crap you see being sold today. I rubbed the top with my sleeve and it polished nicely. Three different kinds of inlay wood decorated the edge and the center of the top was in Walnut burl. It was all wood, not plastic laminate. I started looking at the drawers. They had the same inlay as the top. I pulled on the small center drawer and it was stuck. I pulled harder and it moved a little. Another pull and it came out along with the drawers on the top left and top right. They aligned perfectly. I removed the center drawer and examined the tongue and groove joints. It was solid even after ninety plus years. I replaced the drawer and pushed it in. The problem presented itself when the drawer wouldn't close as it had been.

I pulled the drawer out again, and then carefully aligned the drawer with the bottom guide rail. Everything was perfect and I pushed the drawer in. It stopped about four inches from being closed. Aggravated by this time, I pulled the drawer out and reached in the narrow recess. Stretching all the way back, my fingers touched something. Reaching out with my finger tips just a little further allowed me to grab onto the whatever it was. Carefully, so as to not lose my grip, I pulled the prize from the bureau.

A wallet. A brown wallet. A brown wallet with stampings and engravings on the leather. An empty brown wallet. It looked like any other everyday wallet, except for the designs. The thing is, it looked, felt and even smelled brand new. Who knows how long it had been in the bureau. It was if it came off the line yesterday. No mars, no nicks, no scratches. It was unblemished. It was MINE! I took my find to the old lady out front and asked how much. She looked at it and said "Fifty cents, please".

I already had it in my hand and I gave it to her. I asked for a receipt which she wrote out without question and handed to me. I smiled and thanked her for her time and put the wallet in my pocket. My front left pocket. I don't ever sit on my wallet, it would throw my pelvis out of alignment by wedging one side. I got on the bike, strapped on the helmet, zipped up the leather and started the bike. I figured I was done for the day so I started home, zipping by Cowboy stadium (even though they now play in Arlington), heading up 35 and getting off at Walnut Hill Lane. Couple blocks past the Parker College I turned right and in a few minutes I was at my place, a small 2 br. Rental house.

I put the bike in the one car garage and entered the house through the back door. It was quiet, it was old, but it was mine as long as I paid the little old lady that owned it the three hundred a month she demanded. I didn't tell her an apartment out on Walnut Hill would have cost me eight hundred plus. She just likes me, so that's the rent she charges. Makes my life easy. My VA check covers that, the electricity and the DSL line. I got a Roku and Hulu plus and Netflix subscriptions so I don't need cable or satellite. The odd jobs I do for a certain company, which I can't divulge without killing you, keeps me in food and soda and the other essentials.

I tossed the helmet and jacket on the chair by the door and flopped my ugly carcass down on the couch. I fluffed the pillows and in a short while, was snoring away. I'm sure I was snoring, Denise always claimed I sounded like a freight train when I got going. I wouldn't know, I was asleep. I was just a bit tired from all that hard shopping so I dropped off quickly.

You have to understand something about me. I don't remember my dreams. Ever. I don't know why, I just don't. Well, now I can't say never. I had a doozy of a dream and I remember every vivid detail.

Weird dream! I was standing in a room with all sorts of equipment in it. I couldn't identify most of it. There was some stuff that looking like it belonged in a chemistry lab. Mortar and Pestle. Crucibles, and some glassware. A condenser. As I looked around, I notice a pentagram carved into the stone floor. I did note that the floor and walls were stones that had been shaped into roughly square shape (actually cubes if you take into account they were 3 dimensional) Overhead were great wooden beams, rough hewn from gigantic trees and placed whole on the bulwark of stone. Dust covered much of the area and giant cobwebs adorned the room.

An ancient looking man was in the room, bent over a desk. I went to him and looked over his shoulder. He was working with a piece of leather, engraving all sorts of arcane symbols into the hide. It was fascinating to watch him work. He kept muttering to himself in gibberish. Every so often he's say something in English that I could understand, but for the most part it was unintelligible.

He stopped what he was doing and reached across the table beside him and retrieved a wooden handled tool. The metal part was long and sharp looking. It turned out to be an awl. He used it to drill holes close together along the edges of the leather.

Next he took a spool of what looked like waxed thread, but thicker than normal thread and started to weave it through the holes, binding the piece. As I watched, I realized it was the wallet I'd found today that he was making. When he finished with the sewing, he stepped back away from it a moment, eyeing it critically. He then took a different tool from what he had been using. This silver instrument cut a new design on the wallet and he was done.

He placed the wallet within the confines of the pentagram and began to chant. I didn't understand a word. An eerie glow began to encompass the wallet. It grew steadily brighter as his chant progressed. Louder he chanted and brighter shone the light. It was a brilliant, almost blinding white. Suddenly it was gone. He went over and picked up the wallet. Everything went black.

The next vision I had in that dream was of a young girl, around 16 flirting with a young nobleman. I guessed that was what he was, his clothing looked expensive and he had an air about him. As I watched the scene, detached from it, I noticed guards with crossbows and swords. I noted cannon on the castle battlements, but no firearms were evident.

She had a small package in her hand, which she shyly handed him. I watched him open it to discover a finely engraved wallet. It was the one I watched being made. He took the wallet and thanked the maiden for the gift. He thanked her quite profusely. He escorted her to a secluded section of the garden and thanked her again and again, until she could no longer stand it and fainted. Again the scene dissolved to black.

The dream continued with a middle aged man seated in a large church. Stained glass windows adorned the walls and the high ceiling had numerous paintings, similar to the work of Rafael. The man was fondling the wallet. A moment later, he removed a small bag from the wallet and when he opened the bag it was full of golden coins. He crossed himself and quickly moved to the poor box and dropped all the coins into it. He rushed out of the church and as he was running across a bridge he tossed the wallet into the river. Everything went black yet again.

Following that I saw a man in buckskins. He carried what I recognized to be a 50 caliber Hawkin percussion cap rifle. This was one of the weapons that brought slaughter and destruction to the vast bison herds of the Great Plains. He was lying near the top of a rise and over the rim of the rise was a herd of buffalo that stretched as far as the eye could see. He capped the nipple on his Hawkin and prepared to fire. He took careful aim at one of the large males and was about to squeeze the trigger when the arrow pierced his body, missing the ribs and tearing through the tissues of his lungs and heart. He was dead instantly. Stealthfully the Indian brave came up to where he lay and proceeded to strip the body of anything of value. One of the items taken was the wallet, same as before.

A quick flash and a Cavalry Sergeant removed the wallet from the body of the dead Indian. Another quick flash and there was a young boy playing in the attic of an old house. In one of the boxes he found a wallet, the very same one as in the other parts of the dream. He heard a noise, someone was calling him. He looked around and hurried over to a bureau in the corner. He pulled out the small center drawer and stuffed the wallet in as deep as his little arm would go. He replaced the drawer, shutting it tight. He pulled on the handle but it wouldn't budge. Suddenly, a woman appeared at the stair and demanded he come along, it was time to leave. He was told grandpa and grandma were moving to Texas and he had to come say goodbye.

The dream then faded. That was it. I was just on the edge of consciousness and slowly came awake. I took the wallet out of my pocket and looked at it again. Yes, this was the object in my dream. Strange that I would remember it so vividly. I opened it again, examining it closely. Nothing was there. The leather was soft and supple. Like it had been well used, but it looked brand new. What the heck, I took the few things I had in my old wallet and stuffed them in the new one. Funny, it didn't bulge like the old one did. That was nice. I shoved it back in my pocket and picked up the key to the bike, the jacket and helmet a moment later. Outfitted and ready, I went out to the garage and got on the bike and started it up.

I made it to Wally World in quick time, traffic was light. I needed some groceries and now was a good time to shop. I picked up a cart from Old Sam the greeter. He must have been 80 if he was a day. It'd be interesting to see him try to stop a shoplifter. He'd get hurt, bad. But he was nice and I'd talk with him on occasion. But not today. I cruised through the aisles picking up what I'd eat for the next week or so. When I got done I headed for the checkout. I had enough I let the cashier check the stuff. I figured I'd just fill the two fiberglass saddlebags and the hat rack.

Total bill was 76.81. I pulled my money wad out of the wallet and started counting. It seems I was 8 dollars and change short. 'Damn, ' I thought, 'I don't want to put any of this back. Sure wish there was more money in that wallet.' I fumbled around digging in my pockets for change. I'd grabbed a handful. Not enough. I looked one more time in the wallet and almost dropped my teeth. There in the wallet was a nice crisp Benjamin ($100 bill for the benefit of our English and Aussie friends) sitting there neatly folded in half. I was sure it wasn't there before. The cashier saw it and got that annoyed look that they do so well. Shit I didn't care, I wanted to know where the bill came from. She took it and swiped the special pen over it and stuffed it under her drawer in the till. She handed me my original pile of money back plus the change from the hundred.

I stuffed the bags in the cart and headed for the door. I waived to Sam as I hurried by. He was checking a cart that had activated the Wal-Mart security system. The woman had purchased a Rug Rats DVD and the cashier hadn't swiped it across the magnetic plate to deactivate the unit. I managed to stuff the groceries in the compartments and headed home.