After Image
Chapter 8

Jerome looked relieved when Viola stepped through the door of Tytonidae’s Codex and Viola suddenly realized that she had not spoken to him since her hysteria two nights before. “I’m all better now,” she said to Jerome as she put away her jacket.

“I’m glad to hear that. Eli must be doing you some good. It’s nice to know you aren’t out there all alone. I worry about you way out there on your own.” Jerome said.

“It’s definitely… different having someone out there with me. Been a while since my sister and niece left for Vancouver, I was getting used to being alone again. I have a lot of work to catch up on,” Viola said wandering into the back and putting her music on. “Can you show Eli how to replace and send out orders today?” She didn’t wait for a response, but instead sat down at her workstation and ignored the two men.

Eli shrugged at Jerome and picked up the list that was lying on the counter. Jerome put a hand on Eli’s, forcing Eli to look at the older man.

“She is all right? I know this Viola. This is the, things have changed and I need time before I deal with it,” Jerome stated.

“She’s calm, she’s here, and she’s well. She is dealing with some dramatic changes in her life on top of me being in her home. She’ll be all right.”

“Dramatic changes? Well I guess that means… I’ll just talk to her next week about it,” Jerome said and grabbed the papers from Eli’s hands. “Come on; let me show you my part of the job around here.”

Close to midday, Viola was completely absorbed in her work when she heard the bell above the door ring. She ignored it, hoping Eli or Jerome would help whoever was out there and instead a few minutes later she heard the service bell on the counter ring. Putting down her tools and flipping aside the magnifying lenses attached to her glasses she wandered out into store. Will was standing at the counter. When he saw her, his face lit up with his infectious grin. Viola gave him a half-hearted smile in return.

“I missed seeing you here, yesterday. Jerome said you were home sick. Feeling better now?” Will asked as he handed over the signature pad.

“A lot better actually. Got struck by lightning on the weekend and had this whole cerebral hemorrhage thing. Apparently working on Monday was a bit much and I just needed a bit more rest.”

“Lightning strike? Seriously? What is a cerebral hemorrhage? Are you sure you are okay?”

Viola looked a little stunned at the questions. She reviewed in her mind what she had said and realized that it wasn’t something you just said in normal casual conversation. “Oh, sorry. Cerebral hemorrhage is bleeding in the brain. It was minor. Had a stay in the hospital and they gave me the all clear. And yeah, lightning, or some electrical event. Didn’t leave any scars or burns though, so that’s a bonus,” Viola said giving Will the thumbs up and a pressed lipped grin.

“I didn’t know there was a lightning storm over the weekend.”

“Must have just been by the mountains. I don’t live in town, I live out by Fort Steele Heritage Town. Slightly different weather there. The clouds pile up on the mountains sometimes and I get storms there that don’t happen in town.”

“Interesting,” Will said. A sudden silence ensued as Viola was thinking about getting back to work and Will seemed like he wasn’t ready to leave yet.

“So, anything else you need help with?” Viola finally asked.

“Jeans and a T-shirt today, eh? Are you sure you are feeling well?” Will added.

“I don’t think you know me well enough to determine my health by my attire just yet,” Viola replied indignantly.

“Sure,” Will replied. “We could discuss it more over lunch. It is about that time anyway.”

Viola laughed. “I told you I wasn’t looking for a romantic relationship right?”

“Yes. But we both need to eat.”

“I’m going to work through lunch. I need to catch up on missed work from yesterday. But thanks for the offer,” Viola said and started back towards her work room. Will shrugged and made for the door. Viola stopped at the doorway and turned back to him. “Do you like to play board games? I mean not like Monopoly and the Game of Life or anything, I mean like Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Munchkin and the like.”

“I do, why?” Will asked.

“Well, once a month I have a few people over for a day of board games. It’s this Saturday if you want to come.” Where did that come from? She thought to herself, aghast at her sudden outburst. She was not like that, letting new people, random strangers for that matter, into her life like that. Yet here she had had coffee with him and a few days later was inviting him over to spend time with her and her friends. She suddenly wanted him very badly to say no.

“That sounds like loads of fun. I’ll need your address though, and maybe your mobile number just in case I get lost.” Will was back at the counter now.

“Oh, right,” Viola said, her heart pounding in her chest. Stranger coming to my house. Stranger. Coming. To. My. House! She grabbed one of the business cards by the register and jotted her phone number and address on the back. “See you then,” Viola choked out breathlessly.

“After lunch?” Will asked.

“What?”

“The time of your gathering. Is it after lunch?” Will asked again. He could see that Viola was flustered, it made her feel even worse.

“Sure,” She squeaked and fled into the safety of the back room. Too much change. Too much change. She chanted in her head as she got back to her work.

That night when Eli and Viola returned back to her home, Viola felt exhausted. She was entirely too tired to even think about dinner. We should have picked something up back in town, she thought to herself. She was too tired to want to get back in the car and do that.

“So, I suppose I should, you know, practice Imaging. If I can figure out what the energy feels like I am sure I can better control it,” Viola said. “Maybe I can conjure up some food. I’m too tired to cook.”

Eli laughed at her. “I’m not sure I want to try and eat whatever comes from your imagination right now, what with you having worked yourself to exhaustion today. I’ll cook us up something,” he said as he dug around the fridge for ingredients.

“Well what should I Image?” Viola asked. She could feel her mind buzzing with even the thought of Imaging. It didn’t mind how mentally or physically exhausted she was, that part of her brain, the imaginative and creative side of her mind, never shut off. It was always abuzz with activity, even, sometimes, to the point of insomnia. “And before you say, ‘I thought you were too tired to do anything,’ I should warn you that the part of my brain that Imaging inhabits doesn’t shut off. Remember the whole ‘it happened while I was sleeping’ thing?”

“Yes, yes I remember. I had a ginormous dragon waking up underneath me. Of course I remember.” Only silence ensued after Eli spoke and he popped his head into the living room to see what Viola was up to. “Did I say something wrong?”

Viola smiled. “No you just reminded me of my sister. She always uses the word ginormous.”

“The one that had cancer?” Eli asked, getting back to dinner preparations.

“That’s the one.” Viola stretched on the couch and gave a mighty yawn. “So, Mister-I-Have-To-Be-There-When-You-Image, what is my practice assignment?”

Eli paused momentarily and then spoke, “Why not make prints of your photographs? It’s easy, something you don’t have to put too much imagination into so that you can concentrate instead on the process it takes to pull it into existence.”

“Yes, Master!” Viola said as she sat there staring at the ceiling. She clicked on her music and thought about the picture above her head. It was a macro shot of a lilac leaf after a rainstorm. Drops of water had collected on the leaf and it was surrounded by a bokeh of rich fuchsia and emerald green from the rest of the lilac bush. Nothing happened. She pulled her Galaxy phone from her pocket and flicked on Cyouwa Oto. She felt the pull into that trance like state of being and saw an Image shimmer into existence just above her. She touched her finger to it, felt the spark, and watched it float to the ground. How am I doing that? she asked herself. She started the song over again, trying to grasp that pull. She could distinctly feel when the energy was ready to release, but the lead up to that point just felt like her mind floating away from reality. When she tried to grasp on to that start, that spark to the Image, it felt like the jolt of falling backwards she got when she realized she was falling asleep and woke herself up with that thought. In fact, it was almost the exact same jolt. The exact same feeling. That jolt in bed where her body jerked because it truly felt like falling, that half asleep state, was the same as the trance she used to write. Same part of the brain. She clicked the song to play again and concentrated. When is the moment that I feel like I am falling? When? She listened with eyes closed feeling her way inside her mind. It was the only way to describe what she was doing. Her eyes moving behind closed lids each tone, each note, each word echoed in her mind moving her to a different place in her mind, her eyes trying to follow the pattern and then she found it. “One minute fifty three seconds,” she whispered to herself and let the song loop from that point for five seconds over and over. Where are you? She called out to her mind. She felt it, that energy building up inside her. She felt it deep in her mind. Is that my occipital lobe? She suddenly thought and touched the back of her head. This energy was connected with her eyes. She should have known from the palinopsia trigger that it was. Of course it would be centered in the visual center of her brain. The feeling vanished as she pondered the location and she opened her eyes to replace Eli staring at her.

“So, what was all that?” he asked. He was holding out a plate of steaming spaghetti for Viola. She clicked off the music on her phone and took the plate.

“Just needed a tool to help me concentrate,” Viola replied.

“I am gathering it went well,” Eli said pointing to massive amount of photography prints that littered the ground. There had to be thousands of them.

“Hah!” Viola said digging into her food. “I only thought I made one. Then again it’s been longer than I thought seeing as the food is already done.”

“So any details to add to this Imaging power of yours?”

“It feels like it is coming from my occipital lobe, or somewhere near there. I kind of lost the whole feel for it when I thought about where it was coming from though. That tends to be my problem. Give me too many details about something and I can’t do it right. Give me an outline and I can make it for you no problem. My mind gets all caught up in the details and it distracts me from the goal. It’s like writing, I know how to make a sentence, when to change to a new paragraph, etc., but if you ask me the parts of a sentence or why the paragraph needs to end there, I couldn’t tell you. What is that, instinctual? I mean it’s not like I don’t understand it. In fact, I need to learn all those parts to be able to do it. But, once I comprehend it my brain files away all the terms in some locked bin and just lets the ability to do it filter out through the keyhole. Does that make sense?”

“Sure,” Eli said and smiled. “You see the whole better than the parts.”

“I’m not sure that is exactly it. I have an apt eye for details that no one else sees. I can make connections between things that other people don’t even notice at all.”

“Truthfully, Viola, your whole being kind of baffles me. You seem to be a knot of completely contradictory things that work together to make you a pretty talented and high functioning person. I don’t want to try and understand how your mind works.”

“Am I supposed to say thanks to that?” Viola asked. She finished her food and took Eli’s plate and hers to the kitchen. “Anyway, I think I can Image without the song now. It just clicked in my head before I thought too technically about the process.”

“Maybe you can try that tomorrow. Are you sure you aren’t feeling fatigued from the massive amount of Imaging you just did?” Eli asked as he started to pile the prints that were on the floor.

“Actually, no I don’t feel fatigued at all. Just my hand isn’t burning to write. Like maybe I still have reserves, but am not overflowing. Pulling paper into the air is not as straining as say a car or a person,” Viola replied. “I suppose you are right though. I need to exercise this slowly.” She looked at her hand and to the photographs on the floor. She closed her hand gently and held it to her mouth. It was starting to sink in. This wasn’t a game. This was real. Real power. I have to be responsible about this. And then a sudden thought made her shudder inside. What happens if other people replace out about this? Am I safe? She glanced around her house, suddenly afraid of the very walls. Surely no one was watching her. She had just discovered this herself, how could anyone be watching her?

Will Czernicki watched Viola as she looked around the house. She stopped, staring directly into the camera that Will was currently watching. She can’t know we are watching, can she? What he had just witnessed her do, it was almost frightening. In the back of his mind he had always thought that Mrs. Ironside had sent them on a wild goose chase, that what she suspected this girl could do was not real at all. For how could someone imagine things into existence?

“Are the cameras in her home working?” Mrs. Ironside said coming up behind Will. He watched Viola shift her gaze from the camera and wander into her bedroom.

“More than working, I think we already have something,” Will replied. He rewound the footage and let Mrs. Ironside watch the events play out. She smiled and patted Will on the back.

“Here I thought we would be out here for quite a while before any solid proof manifested. It looks like she is learning quickly how to control the Images. I think she might be the one I’ve been looking for. Let’s watch her for a few more days and see if she can master it without the music. I have seen too many get to this point and completely burn out. Maybe you can get her to open up to you when you see her on Saturday.” Mrs. Ironside replied.

Will merely nodded and turned back to the monitors.