Mind's Eye

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Douglas E. Richards

Published by Paragon Press, 2014

E-mail the author at [email protected]

Friend him on Facebook at Douglas E. Richards Author, or visit his website at www.douglaserichards.com

All rights reserved. With the exception of excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.

First Edition

Also By Douglas E. Richards

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WIRED
Sequel)

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Middle Grade/YA
  (Enjoyed by kids and adults alike, ages 9 to 99) 

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(Book 1) 

The Prometheus Project: Captured
(Book 2) 

The Prometheus Project: Stranded
(Book 3) 

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Ethan Pritcher, Body Switcher

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To my daughter, Regan, the first to read my every novel. Thanks for your enthusiasm and sharp eye. You are an extraordinary young woman: bright, funny, determined, and endearing. The joy you have brought this proud father over the past seventeen years is truly immeasurable.

Mind’s Eye

Douglas E. Richards

Paragon Press

Part One

“The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye.”

            —Shana Alexander

1

The stench was so utterly horrid that it seemed to be attacking him. It was the putrid stink of rot and of food gone bad. It was an unholy soup of dozens of odors that each would have been bad enough alone, but which seemed to clash in revolting and impossible ways when forced together.

Panic squeezed his heart to near bursting as he realized he was
drowning
in this noxious cloud. He fought desperately to take a breath, but this act was somehow impossible. It was as though he had forgotten how, as if the mental wiring that triggered his breathing response had been neatly snipped. His burning lungs screamed at him for air, and he knew he had but seconds to live.

Suddenly, from the depths of his panic, an epiphany burst forth. He wasn’t drowning. Instead, he was in the middle of a terrible nightmare, and his breathing reflex was only failing in the vivid dream world his mind had constructed. His physical body was asleep and paralyzed.

He threw all of his will into tearing off the crushingly heavy cloak of unconsciousness,  and an instant later his full mind exploded to the surface, like a swimmer held down too long in the depths of a cold and murky ocean, and escaping just in time.

Now fully conscious, albeit groggy, he felt the weight of eyelids that were shuttering his vision. He heard whispers in his mind; dozens of them. He could catch words and phrases; images. A kaleidoscope of activity just below the surface, blending together into a white noise; incessant chatter from hundreds of non-stop talkers all speaking at once. He shook his head to try to stop the maddening whispers in his mind, but without success.

He anxiously opened his eyes.

And was greeted by an absolute, impenetrable darkness.

Fighting off the panic that now returned with a vengeance, he carefully extended his right arm and was rewarded when his hand made contact with a smooth surface that felt like steel. He continued to probe his surroundings, and seconds later, his hand came into contact with yet another surface over his head. A roof. One made of steel, like the wall he had found.

The roof was heavy, but by raising both hands above his shoulders, he was able to push it upward, flooding his prison with blinding light. He continued pushing until he hit a literal tipping point, and the roof fell downward as if on a hinge, slamming into the side of the metal container noisily.

Even before his eyes fully adjusted to the light, he could see he was in a living sea of garbage that filled about half of the large container, which was painted a familiar shade of green.

He was inside a dumpster
.

The sight of the nasty garbage along with the smell forced him to do what his unconscious body had managed to avoid until this point: he leaned over and vomited, although his stomach must have been nearly empty, because it was more of a dry heave than anything else.

He peeked his head over the top of the industrial-sized container, his eyes now fully adjusted to the light. He was in the back of what appeared to be a strip mall, and judging from the garbage he had been sitting in, one whose retail tenants included grocery stores, butcher shops, restaurants, and most unholy of all, diaper-changing stations.

He climbed out of the container and inspected himself. He had sneakers on his feet and was wearing a black T-shirt and faded jeans. He was painted head to toe with stains and fluids of unknown kinds, including one that may well have been blood.

What had he been doing in a dumpster? He searched his memory.

And found nothing.

How drunk did one have to be to not remember spending a night in a garbage-filled coffin?

He gasped as a deeper truth penetrated his mind: he couldn’t remember
anything
. Not only didn’t he know how he had come to be in a dumpster, he didn’t know how he had come to be on this
earth
.

He strained to at least remember his own name, but it wouldn’t come.

He checked his pockets but found no wallet or other identification.

What was going on?

His heart rate leaped to well over a hundred beats per minute and he felt dizzy from the shock and adrenaline rush. He had to calm down. He had to
think
.

But he found it hard to concentrate. The whispers and images in his mind continued unabated, and he couldn’t imagine anything being more disconcerting or inimical to organized thought. He couldn’t seem to get them to stop, although he was at least able to suppress them somewhat, willing them into a deeper and less obtrusive place in his consciousness. Still, he wondered how much more of this he could take and retain his sanity.

Or was he insane already?

No. It couldn’t be. He
felt
totally rational. And totally sane.

He laughed out loud.
Sure
, he thought.
I’m as sane and rational as any other guy without a memory who wakes up in a dumpster and hears voices in his head.

Off in the distance, across a field of dirt and scrub, he spotted a Shell gas station. It was far more isolated than his current location, and he was sure to find a bathroom there he could use to clean himself up, something he desperately needed to do. He couldn’t take his own pungent stench much longer.   

He had walked toward the station for about five minutes when he came to a narrow side-street, and waited for a lone car to go by, its windows open and music blaring.

He recognized the song immediately. It figured. He had instant recall of the lyrics to a random song, but didn’t have the faintest idea of where he lived, or who he was.

The driver was a kid of seventeen or eighteen. “Wow, what’s with this guy?” he heard the driver say clearly as the car passed him. “Ever hear of something called a
shower
?” the teen added, and then the tone of his voice changed, now conveying discomfort and confusion. “Is that
blood
on his neck?”

But the man without a past knew that he couldn’t have heard this. He had been looking at the driver at the time—
and the teen’s lips hadn’t moved
. Besides, the car radio was putting out far too many decibels for him to have heard the words as clearly as he did.

What he
thought
he had heard was just another voice among the many in his head. He shook his head vigorously, like a dog after a bath, but the voices remained.

He arrived at the Shell only minutes later, entered the men’s room, a small, one-man facility behind the main station, and locked the door carefully behind him.

He looked into the small mirror but didn’t recognize the face that stared back at him. But he did recognize one thing immediately. He had a trail of caked blood on his neck, running down from his hairline, and more dried blood on his head.

His eyes widened as he recalled the words of the teen driver of the car that had passed. The words he had hallucinated. The kid had said he had blood on his neck. Pretty accurate for a hallucination. He felt around his scalp and found a tender spot that his fingers sensed as being dried blood and a newly forming scab, and then quickly removed his hand so he wouldn’t inadvertently reopen it.

He stared back into the mirror and continued his self-assessment. He was clean-cut, with a head of jet black hair, brushed back, and a day or two’s growth of stubble. His teeth were perfectly straight, although he had the feeling that several years of braces sponsored by loving parents whom he could not remember had played a big role in this perfection. He wasn’t classically handsome, but he suspected his face was symmetrical and rugged enough to attract women. He guessed that he was just under six feet in height.

He removed the horrid shirt he was wearing, wet in many places where it had sopped up stains and distilled odor, and dropped it in a small trash container in the corner. His body was lean and well-muscled, his chest hairless.

He stared at himself for several long seconds, willing his memory to come back. But it would not.

Luckily, the bathroom had plenty of liquid soap and paper towels, and he scrubbed every last inch of his face, neck, and torso, and washed grime and blood from his hair, remembering to be exceedingly gentle near his wound. He shoved his head as near the small faucet as he could and splashed water on his hair until it was clear of soap. He then dropped his jeans and scrubbed his legs. While he could exit the bathroom without a shirt, he knew he needed to put his pants back on, which he did with great reluctance.

An image separated itself from the multitude of whispers and scenes buzzing around in his brain. He jerked his head around as the image pierced the dense thicket of internal chatter and stabbed at his consciousness. It was a view of the door to the bathroom he was now in. But a view from
outside
of the bathroom.

He focused on this now-isolated thread, not knowing why his subconscious had decided this particular hallucination was in such urgent need of attention. The bathroom door was being viewed through the windshield of a car that had just pulled into the Shell lot. He saw a finger pressing a cell phone touch screen to dial a number, and then the phone disappeared from view.

“I found our boy, Hall,” said a voice in his head with perfect clarity, and for just an instant, an image of the face he had been staring at in the mirror only moments before flashed into existence.
His
face.