The Secret

The Secret


The book dropped from her hands and she shook herself as if trying to wake herself up. The book lay on the floor of the taxicab. She was breathing hard and extremely freaked out. She told the cabdriver to pull over as they reached the top of the high sweeping Verasano Narrows Bridge out of New York city. He did so and asked for his payment. She pushed a twenty into his hand and opened the door. She sprinted strait for the edge and leapt off. She floated a moment and then disappeared from the cabdriver's sight as her body plunged seventy meters to a watery death.
* * * *
Lance came back from the local pool, whistling to himself to show his delight. His towel draped around his neck and his swim shorts hung loose from his waist. His origin was Spain. He had moved over to America with his wife, hoping for a new start, because of all the crazy advertising he'd seen back home about how wonderful America was. Now he didn’t have enough money to get back. He'd started to bullfight over in New York even though it wasn’t a very popular sport in America. He'd been bullfighting that night. He loved the challenge. He loved the feeling of power over both the bulls and the crowd. He was the main man and made the crowd roar the loudest.

He looked outside of the garage and there were fresh skid marks, probably from earlier in the day. Disregarding it, Lance slipped his card through the slot and the light turned from red to green. The door became unlocked and he slipped through into the cool building. It was June in New York and during the summer, the fumes outside seem to make the sweat boil off your head. He made his way into the old elevator and slid the door to the left to close it. He pressed the button and the old lift creaked and raised him up to the second floor. There was a soft “ding” when the lift stopped. Lance pushed the door open to the right and stepped out. He fumbled with his keys for a moment and then stuck one of them into the keyhole. He turned the handle and opened the door. A gasp escaped from his mouth. He was surprised to see that his apartment had been trashed. His wife always cleaned up after him. Her name was Katie. For some reason though today there was no sign of her for all of his stuff was still where he had left it that morning.

A vase was broken and the pieces scattered all over the floor. Lance began to realize something was very wrong. He entered the room and looked around. There were plenty more things scattered. Lance did not bother picking any of it up. His hands started to tremble for he feared the worst. Someone had obviously broken in and probably stolen something. He eyes floated down to a note on the floor. He went over to it and picked it up. Whoever wrote it must have been in a hurry for there were only two words and those were quite scribbled. When he was finally able to make it out his heart skipped a beat. He would have wanted any other two words in the whole world except for “WIFE DEAD”. Was it true? Had someone just broken into his home and killed his wife? He contemplated who and why someone would have done that. His wife was not someone that would go around making people angry enough to kill her. Without her in his life then there was no reason to live. He could not go back to Spain. He was stuck here in America with a weak paying job and no partner to help him get through it all.

The intercom interrupted his thoughts as a familiar voice spoke to him. "Hey man! We gots to get going man, we gots a bullfight going this afternoon, remember?" said Johnny, a cab driver who is a good friend of Lance's.

Lance really did not want to go. His life was in the biggest pit that it had ever been in. He just wanted to die right there. He decided not tell Johnny what had happened and instead to just go along. He hesitated then pressed the intercom and said, "Yeah, I remember, be right down. He trudged to his room and got his uniform and stuffed it in his duffel bag. He threw his towel onto his bed and figured not to worry about anything. He had a plan to purposely get killed because the idea of living was no longer attractive. He would let a bull beat him. Feeling worse, he made his way to the elevator and activated it to go downward. Once he got the first floor, he saw Johnny waiting outside of the locked door. He went out of the door and Johnny asked him, "You all right? You look a little pale."

"I'm fine," said Lance, "Let's get going,"
"All right then, but I gotta grab a burger first"

Lance opened up his trunk and threw in the bag. Both of them hurried across the street to the convenient MacDonalds. Johnny put his money on the counter to pay for everything but Lance insisted that he go ahead and cover it. Being who he is, Johnny accepted and made Lance pay for the two burgers and fries and it came out to be $13.50. They jogged back across the street and hopped into the cab. The front door was locked so Lance got in the back. He put his lunch on the other side then sat down. When he sat down he felt a lump underneath him. He got back up and it appeared to be a paperback novel. One of Johnny's customers must have left it behind. Lance read the title, The Secret. He picked it up and sat back down. He set the book down and decided to eat.

Once he was done, they were in a usual New York City jam. Typical. He knew that this was going to take a really long time so he picked up the book and opened it. What happened next was completely unexpected. His eyes rolled up into his head and images of when he was a boy flashed through his mind. He remembered the foolish adults running down the streets with the bulls before the bullfights. They had no chance if a bull caught up to them and impaled them onto its horns. The bull would toss them about as if they were dolls. It was a horrifying yet somehow silly sight to see.

Lance had promised to himself that one-day, he would be able to get away from them and he would become a famous matador. Seventy-five percent of that had come true. He had trained and trained for running and the day he finally felt he was ready, he ran with the bulls for all he was worth and made it away from them. In time he also did become a matador, just not a famous one. And now his bullfights were sparsely attended for New York did not want to see anything foreign. Still, he just did it for the thrill.

Images were still flowing through his head when the book fell from his hands and onto the floor, closing. Lance became conscious again. He looked around, dazed, and saw that the traffic was still jammed. Checking the time, he knew that he was going to be late if something did not change. He told Johnny to pop the trunk and his friend immediately understood. Lance grabbed his duffel bag, stuffed the book into it, zipped it back up, slammed the door and started jogging.

He realized as he made his way to the coliseum, that there were many beautiful things that this world had to offer and that there were plenty of reasons why he shouldn't purposely kill himself. He realized that if he saved his pay for five months, subtracting rent and food that he would be able to get back to Spain. Heartened, he decided to make this his new goal. Maybe if he did well tonight then his boss would be convinced that he need a raise which would shorten his time here. He rounded the corner and the coliseum came into view. His heart was lightened even though his head was still racing with his earlier thoughts of his wife, his apartment and of the strange book. Yes, the strange book. He wanted to try it again. His hand reached inside the bag and pulled it out...

Lance hurried into a nearby alleyway and sat himself down. A repeat of what happened in the car appeared in his mind. But it went further and faster. This time it jumped ahead to his marriage and he remembered how happy he was. It showed all of the happy things in his life and the wonderful times spent with his now deceased bride. That all took place in Spain. America seemed to have dulled her happiness and love for him. There was a white flash and Lance was standing back in his apartment. Everything was normal, nothing was destroyed. His apartment was perfectly fine. He glanced at the glowing clock. It was his usual time to go to meet some of his friends at the pool. He started towards the door but a figure came out of the bedroom in a swimsuit and T-shirt and went out of the door. His knees buckled under him. Was he a ghost in the past or something? He had just watched himself walkout of the door. He quieted himself as he saw his wife come out of the bedroom. He tried to go over to her but he could not be seen, felt, or heard. He watched as she ate her breakfast. Oh, how he wished she could see him so he could warn her. She finished and started cleaning her dish off in the sink when the doorbell rang. Lance ran over through the door to see who it was.

It was the same man that he could have sworn seeing on his way out of the building. But otherwise this man was a complete stranger. His wife answered the door and let him in! He instantly knew what was going on. She had been cheating on him. He could bear this no longer and rushed into the apartment and strait out of the window. He fell and fell and the street came up to him quite quickly. Just when he thought he should be dead, he was back in the apartment. He lay down on the couch until the two came back out of the bedroom. He sat up and watched them.

There they stood arm in arm. That's when the stranger asked: "Katie, come to California with me, we could be so happy there, you could meet my family and you could stick your feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time and watch to sunrise."

"Yes, I'd love to come. I know you will give me so much more appreciation than this one ever did. All he would ever do is leave everything lying on the ground for me to pick up."

"Do you want to do any thing to get back at him?"
"Sure, let's do the same thing to him that he does to me every single day."

Then she went and packed all of her things while he ransacked the place. When he was done, it looked exactly like he had found it that afternoon. Destroyed. Except for one thing, the note. The door closed pointing out that she had left with him but the note was not there.

Then disappearing just as soon as it came, a shadowy figure appeared in the middle of the room and a little note dropped from its hand and onto the floor, and then it was gone. He knew what the note contained. He heard a loud screech of breaks outside of the window. He ran to see what happened, and then he saw the stranger's car with his wife get t-boned as soon as they had pulled out of the garage. Leaving the both of them dead. He had no reason feel sorry for her anymore.

What puzzled him the most: was what was that thing that left that note? Was it death itself coming to tell me of my loss? And why? Another flash but very quickly came; it was someone lying down in the dirt. He appeared to have thigh and stomach wounds.
He woke up when a cat had pounced onto the book after it had scared the feline. The book was now closed and that seemed to be how he woke up. Lance was sad that the images had come to his mind so clearly, that they had not been blurred at least a little bit, because now that he knew the truth about his wife he feared that he would not be able to shake the images. He promised to himself that he would never use the book again for when you go digging up the past, all you seem to find is dirt. He got up and ran to the coliseum. He got into his changing room and caught his breath.

Later, as Lance prepared for the fight, images of the book flowed through his mind and frightened him, for a book with so much power should not be lying around in some taxicab. He tried to shake off the feeling but it kept coming back. He shivered even though he was wearing quite a bit of clothing. He heard his name called and he went out into the arena. He felt that he was prepared to face this bull and the one after it, for there are two bulls for each matador. The other matadors get to go after Lance so he must make a good impression on the crowd in order to raise the bar of expectation for the others. The bull is unleashed; Lance easily makes it charge. His body swiftly moves out of the way. He was feeling good, Lance knew he had a chance now and was ready to fight. The bull charged a lot faster than before. He moved out of the way too late and the horn ripped through his thigh, disabling him.

His heart skipped a beat as he remembered that this is exactly what happened in the book. The book had known that he was going to die but Lance had failed to realize it. The bull stopped, turned around and charged towards Lance. He knew that he would not be able to move out of the way in time and accepted his fate. He took a step forward as the bull's horns pierced his stomach after he had realized what he had seen, the future. He was forced onto the ground and the crowd came, just like in the book.

After the body was rushed to the hospital. The janitor came through and scooped all the bull crap left over and cleaned up the blood by shoveling more dirt over it. He went through Lance's things so that they could be sent to the hospital. He grabbed his normal clothes since Lance was brought to the hospital in his matador uniform. He picked up the duffel bag and a book fell out. He read the cover, The Secret it read. He just loved reading so he slipped it into his pocket and went on his way...