Free What Doesn't Kill You (A Suspense Collection) by Tim Kizer

morning.”
     
    11.
    “How often do you experience déjà vu?” Stanley asked.
    “Occasionally. Probably as often as when I was alive.”
Richard was idly drumming his fingers on the armrest.
    “Don’t you think it should become more frequent now
that nothing new is happening to you?”
    “Why? I’m not reliving my past life, Doc. It’s more
like a… like a game now. You know those city-building video games where you set
up factories, houses, restaurants, collect taxes, and so on? It’s quite close
to that.”
    “Are you talking about SimCity?”
    “Funny you should mention it. That’s what I was just
thinking of. I never played this game, but I heard the name.” Richard grinned.
“You see, if you’re thinking something, I’m thinking it, too.”
    Observing Richard’s calm demeanor, Stanley couldn’t get
rid of the feeling that the man knew about the smashed store windows and the
heartbeat check. Then Stanley recalled that he’d driven past Juicy Couture the
next morning after destroying its window and found no signs of his rampage, which
of course didn’t prove that Richard was right.
    “Can you read my mind?” Stanley asked.
    “No, I can’t. And I have no desire to be able to do
it.” Richard interlocked his hands in his lap. “You know what I’ve been curious
about this whole time?”
    “What is it?”
    “I wonder if everyone gets the opportunity to have an
afterlife dream. Could I be the special case? Or maybe you have to earn it
somehow.”
    “Hopefully, you’re not the only one.”
    “I hope so, too. Just imagine what kind of afterlife
dream Einstein could have created. Incredibly sophisticated, I bet. I would
love to take a peek at it.”
    “Maybe you are Einstein and simply don’t remember it?”
    “I wish.”
    Stanley made a hemming sound as he pondered Richard’s
words. Then he said, “If I am a creation of your mind, then doesn’t it mean
that when you talk to me, you talk to yourself?”
    “I suppose it does.”
    “Sane people don’t talk to themselves, do they?”
    “A lot of sane people talk to their dogs, cats, and
ever cars, although they realize they might as well be talking to the wall.”
Richard cocked his head. “They talk to dogs and I talk to my characters.”
    Stanley squinted at the window, whose blinds were drawn
at the moment, and suddenly realized that he couldn’t remember whether he’d
parked his car in the parking lot outside the building or in the parking
structure on Lakewood and Carson.
    “I’d like to tell you a secret, Richard,” he finally
said. “Last Wednesday night I threw a rock at a store window. Did you have
anything to do with that?”
    “Why did you do it?”
    “I had my reasons. But I was wondering if you had a
hand in it.”
    “How can you blame me for you breaking a store window?”
    “Hypnosis, for example. Did you study hypnosis? Do you
know how to hypnotize people?”
    “I wish. Last Wednesday, huh? Right after we spoke? Were
you perchance conducting an experiment, Doc?”
    “As a matter of fact, I was.” Stanley shut his eyes and
massaged the bridge of his nose for a few seconds. “Listen, Richard. I’m
willing to discuss your theory with an open mind. Just for the sake of argument,
let’s assume that you’re right and we’re living in an afterlife dream.”
    Richard narrowed his eyes and cracked a mischievous
smile. “What happened, Doc? What changed your mind? Did you notice something
odd?”
    “Maybe.”
    “What was it? Did you finally remember that there was
no parking lot there a month weeks ago? Or did you jump off a tall building?”
    “No to both questions. What I was going to say is, I
want to see more proof.”
    Richard put his right hand inside his jacket and said,
“I bet you know what have in here.” Then he pulled out a gun, which was
probably the same gun he’d brought a week ago.
    “Didn’t you promise not to bring any weapons?”
    “Come on, Doc, don’t be such a scaredy-cat.”