Unplanned and random teleportation is a bitch.   Coming out of a deep sleep with llama standing over you in Illinois or breaking an arm when immediately falling out of a kids treehouse in Hartford, Connecticut are just a few of the examples of unplanned teleportation being a problem. (It was really just a sprain, but the point stands.)  The lesser problem is things showing up unexpectedly, a small tractor plow, a sailors cap, and a dog’s kennel at the foot of your bed.   That has been my life for the last five months.

Let me begin by saying I am and have been a professional writer for most of my adult life. Even if you haven’t read my stuff, you are probably familiar with the titles.  I make stuff up, but I wish I was making this up.  Instead, I am simply reporting it, telling my story as it had happened to me.  I want a record for my kids so if I ever get locked up in the looney bin, they have some grounds for committing me permanently.

My kids always loved it when I told them stories , then I began writing down the stories.  I completed my first book, a fantasy novel. You know the type with dragons, elves, wizards and swords. It sold surprisingly well, so much so that by the third book in the series I was able to quit my day job as an Environmental Compliance Officer for demolition sites and support my family entirely through writing.

My life was great for about ten years, fame, fortune, a great family life.  Then my wife, now ex-wife, decided to find herself.  She found herself with the Pool Boy, and she discovered herself under her Personal Trainer, and then she really uncovered herself at a Swingers Convention in Las Vegas while I was signing books at San Diego Comic Con.  It wasn’t all bad, she now has to clean out the gutters of the house that I lost in the divorce while I only have to worry about the tire pressure on the four tires of my fifth wheel trailer.  Sure, she got half the royalties of my first six books for her entire life, along with half of the movies profits from the series that is streaming, but I got to keep my keyboard and my three high resolution computer screens with the highest refresh rate on the market, not to mention my ergonomic office chair.  But I am not bitter.

At least I have a good relationship with my twins, Lila and Liam.  They are great kids.  Liam plays double A ball as a shortstop, Go Dayton Dragons.  And Lila is doing great as an Assistant Editor at the publisher that handles my steampunk books; remember nepotism starts as home.   Anyone who complains about her getting the job because of family connections, I say ‘Why not?’ It’s silly not to use all your blessings,  connections and advantages to get ahead in this world.

But this is not about my family, it is about my problems with teleportation.  I cannot explain how this problem is happening, just what happens when it occurs.  First, I want to explain that I do not drink, at least very rarely, maybe a drink every six months or so, if I find myself in a bar with someone and I have a drink, one maybe two. I also do not do drugs a least not in ten years, and then it was only marijuana, first in college and then the first year of my divorce.  I am pretty sure I am being teleported and not chemically induced wandering.  When it first happened, I immediately went to a doctor and had a complete work up from A to Z.  Nothing wrong, no tumors, no strokes, no head injuries or physical problem (okay higher cholesterol than it should be and I am fifteen pounds overweight) but nothing that would explain the strangeness of things that are happening to me.

Then I tried to figure out if it was scientific, I videotaped myself sleeping, which is when the teleportation occurred.  I bought a Geiger counter, an infrared sensor, a microwave detector and a magnetometer.  No changes, no issues uncovered. Just one second, I am in bed asleep, the next I am somewhere else.

There is only one of two possible explanations.  Either magic, or technology so advanced that to me, a human living in the 21st century, it might as well be magic.  (Yep, I know Arthur C. Clarke first voiced that concept, but I am a writer, and a good writer always steals from the better writers.)  There is no other explanation for the two things that keep happening to me, so I will just call it magic.  Teleporting when you are asleep is troubling, while things teleporting into my travel trailer are mostly just annoying.  I am pretty sure they are somehow related; they started at the same time with no explanation.

My teleportations occur  almost every Friday and Saturday night,  I go to sleep in my trailer and wake up somewhere else.   Always within twenty miles of my camp site.  No rhyme or reason as to where I will wake up.  Most times on solid ground, but there have been a few times I ended up in a lake and that one time after I misjudged the twenty-mile rule and I ended up just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, luckily, I am a good swimmer.

So, every Friday and Saturday night I go to bed with a wrist wallet containing a hundred-dollar bill, a duplicate ID and a credit card.  I also have to wear some sort of appropriate sleeping clothing.   I learned this because it was difficult to explain why I was in the Central Valley Water Reclamation Facility parking lot in Salt Lake City, Utah in just my boxer briefs.

Early on I tried shackling myself to the bed.  It’s embarrassing going into one of those adult stores and getting fuzzy pink restraints.  It didn’t work, when I returned from my mysterious trips the shackles were still in place, still locked.  I threw them away in a dumpster behind a Taco Bell after they did not do anything after three separate teleportations.

I tried staying awake on Friday and Saturday nights, but if I just close my eyes for even the shortest time, I get teleported.  So, I gave up on staying awake.   I have developed other rules for Friday and Saturday nights,   I  avoid setting up deep in the desert, and I had already, before this started happening, I would avoid deep freezing snowy areas in the wintertime.  So, this teleportation thing really hasn’t changed that aspect of my life, whoopee.

Just to clarify, I live in my trailer.  Not a double wide, I have a 35-foot fifth wheel trailer that I tow around with my Heavy-Duty F-250.  I like traveling but I love sleeping in the same bed every night.  Best of both worlds.  I used to sometimes stay in a place for a week or two weeks, write a lot.  I would occasionally leave my rig somewhere to fly to a comic book convention or book signing.  Since the teleportation thing started I don’t like to be too far from my trailer, that way I can kind of know where I might end up on my mysterious movements.

Also staying in my rig makes it easier to deal  with  strange things showing  up in my trailer, mostly near my bed.  Whereas the teleportations only occur on Fridays and Saturday nights, the incoming items happen on random days when I am sleeping.  Have you ever tried to get a twenty-foot rowboat out of a thirty-five-foot travel trailer?  Heck for the first hour that morning I couldn’t even get to my bathroom.  I do not want to have to explain that to some hotel staff at the Marriot.

Sometime  the items are small, a stuffed Heathcliff plushy, a green light bulb,  but the largest things after the thirty-foot boat  was  a wardrobe of women’s clothing, size 11 to 14 dress and size five shoes mostly with a one-inch heel.  Good thing I had an electric chainsaw in my trailer otherwise I would have had to climb out through a window.

But until I can figure this out, I cannot stay at my kid’s places, I not only do not want to leave their house in the middle of the night, but I also do not want to explain why a dirty spare eighteen-wheeler tire is sitting beside my bed in the morning.

I started keeping track of these teleportations after I figured out I wasn’t crazy.  How did I figure out I wasn’t crazy. After the medical examination  I hired a private investigator to watch my trailer for a on  Friday and Saturday night.  He set up cameras to watch both sides, and then he personally sat outside of my trailer for both nights.  The first night a box of crayons, 152 colors,  appeared in my bathroom, right in the toilet.  I didn’t own any crayons; I didn’t leave and no one got inside my trailer.  The next night I woke up in an alley behind a Chinese restaurant.  I got a taxi back; I was only twelve miles away.  The detective had no explanation when I showed up unexpectedly, because as far as he knew I was still asleep in my trailer.  We reviewed the video and there was no explanation.  He believed I had gone out through the roof, but I had put a seal on that exit and it was still in place the next morning when I returned.  In summary he walked away in a huff thinking I was messing with him. But not until after I paid him and he gave me all the footage from his videotaping.  I have watched the footage numerous times for clues, nothing.  No flashes, no mysterious shadows, nothing visual no matter how many times I have watched the videos.

On the nights I teleport, nothing ever appears, so maybe things can only go one way at a time, either me going out, or something coming in.

I need to figure this out.

My writing is starting to be affected by my mind always dwelling on this.

My agent, the very nice Vivian McNuff, has made some comments.  My production is falling off; I usually write two books every eighteen months.  Now I might be getting a book out once a year.  Of course, I am worried about  where I am going to end up on the  weekend.   I have an Excel spreadsheet showing dates of events, distances traveled, size of the incoming objects.  Everything that I can think of.  Nothing makes sense.  It has been six months since this started and no pattern is emerging as to ‘how’, or the biggest question ‘why’.   If I could figure out one of these it, I might be able to get it to stop.

Its Saturday morning and I just got back from a teleportation.  I ended up seven miles away in a cow pasture, I was able to call an Uber after walking a mile to find a main road with an address.

Its Sunday and I just got back from a teleportation event.  I ended up in the same field with the same cows.  It wasn’t the exact same spot in fact it was about a hundred yards away from where I ended up the previous night.

I have never ended up in basically the same place twice, so what does this mean?   Does it mean anything?  I have to drive to book signing a hundred miles north of here this week, but if I can manage it, I am coming back to this campground next weekend to see if I can duplicate the conditions.

Its Saturday morning and I did not teleport last night.  I was in the exact same spot as last Friday night, I was even able to get the exact same camping spot.

Sunday morning.  I did not end up in the same cow pasture.  But when I woke up on the lawn of a housing development, I was able to call Uber to take me back to my campsite.  I realized it was the same highway back to my campsite, a quick calculation in my head and looking on a map confirmed it.  I went the same direction, the same basic compass direction three times in a row.   The distance varied but not the direction.   I had never mapped my directions before.

The next week I did no writing; Vivan, my agent, was going to be pissed.  I was too busy plotting on maps.  I bought about twenty road maps of the twenty different states I have been in since this started happening.  I also got a really good road atlas and began plotting all the teleportations.  The starting points at my campsite and to my best recollection where I ended up.   At first no pattern developed.  It was not obvious at first, mainly because my staring point kept changing.  I would teleport on a Friday night, move my camper and occasionally teleport from another campsite the next night, perhaps if I had stayed in one place I might have discovered the direction of consistent travel sooner.  There was a pattern developing but I just could not see it at first.  I do not have the best sense of direction and I rely heavily on my GPS while traveling.

On Friday I teleported again, but not on Saturday night.  I compared that trip vector to all the other ones.  It was in all directions, north, south, east, west and all the points in-between.  I realized I needed a bigger map.

The internet is great, if you have the money and the time you can get almost anything.  Then you can get it shipped to just about any post office via general delivery, if you are willing to pay.  It took another week but I finally got a huge map of the US.  I parked my trailer all by its lonesome on some Public Access lands on a Tuesday and got to work plotting.

It took me all the way to Friday night to transfer all my small map plotting onto the large map.  First, I went and bought a step ladder, then  I mounted the map on the passenger side of my trailer.  It made it hard to get in out of my trailer but I needed the awning and built in lighting to work on my plotting.  Then I went and bought colored yarn and a lot of heavy-duty stickers.  Red for Friday night trips, blue for Saturday night trips.

During these four days a pattern started to develop.  All my trips, to the best of my recollection all pointed to one place, the Southeastern corner of Colorado.  It got to be Friday night. I had never gone to bed on a Friday night hoping a teleportation to occur but I did that night.  This time I brought small map of my local area, so I could mark exactly where I ended up.

Saturday morning, I woke up three miles away from my trailer.  I had to hoof it as I had no cell service.  A compass heading of three hundred degrees, directly towards the southeastern corner of Colorado.  As soon as I got back to my trailer, I plotted the trip and tore down my campsite in record time and picked a direction, in this case, as westward as I could.  I drove for five hours, covering three hundred and fifty miles, that much closer to Colorado.  A full night’s sleep and nothing happened.

I woke up on Sunday morning frustrated, I was hoping for more data to plot but I got nothing, except a random dirty second base lying on my floor.  It might have been first or third base for all I knew.  It was sitting on my bed Sunday morning when I woke up.  I threw it on a soccer field on my way to breakfast, maybe they could use it for something.  I pondered what to do.  I had a book signing this coming weekend in California and I would have to drive all week to get there.  I just was not up for it.

“Vivian, I have to cancel my con appearance this weekend.”

“I am sorry you can’t I already cashed the check.”  She said in a half joking manner.  I knew Vivian, she was mostly serious when it came to money.

“Come on Vivian, I have a bit of an emergency.”

There was a pause.  “Kids, okay?”

“Yeah, I said.”  She was fishing for my reason.  I was not going to tell her about the teleportation; she would think I was making it up. Heck if I wasn’t experiencing it, I would think I was making it up.

“So, what is the emergency?”

I couldn’t think of anything that she would believe.  “Its personal and lets leave it at that.”

Vivian didn’t even pause.  “You can tell me, I am your agent, kind of like a priest or a doctor, I will keep it confidential.”

I was frustrated.  I put up with a lot being a writer, mostly the promotional stuff was a pain, and the fans while great could be a little much.  I am naturally introverted but having to sit in a booth and interact for hours at a time with hundreds of people.  And only three minutes a piece while I sign books  can get to be a little much.   This all ran through my head.

“What is it, why can’t you make it?  I have you on two panels, you should have had the new book summary for ‘Bats, Belfries and Belt-fed Bazookas” a month ago so we could have the cover art done for this convention as well.”

I saw red.  “Shove it Vivian. I told you I have a problem, cancel the appearance.  That is final,  you need to respect that.  I will call you in a week, don’t call me.”    I hung up to her stunned silence.

I had never lost my temper with her before.  Never had cross words, never even a terse e-mail exchange. I sat down on my truck bumper and thought it through.  She would be mad.  I would have to apologize.  I was wrong for getting mad.  But I had made her and the agency a ton of money over the years.  We had a contract for an entire series with at least three books left to write and an animated series based on it, not to mention the overseas comic book rights.

She would get over it.

Back to the problem at hand.  I was heading towards Colorado.  I was going to get to the bottom of this.

Twenty hours later I was in Colorado.

But I was not sure where to go.  My lines of intersection of my teleportations were too broad.  Either some of my maps were off, or some of my records based on my recollections were erroneous, or my tools were not exacting enough.  I had it narrowed down to three counties, Baca, Brent or Prowers.   I set up my trailer outside of Lamar, Colorado and spent the next couple of days traveling around the tri-county area, getting maps and familiarizing myself with the layout of each county.  The only thing that appeared in that time was a t-shirt, freshly laundered and folded neatly on my bed that said, ‘World’s Best Grandpa’.   I felt bad for whoever lost the shirt, but there was nothing I could do about it, I dropped off at a Salvation Army Thrift Store in Eads.

I felt prepared for Friday and Saturday night.

I wasn’t.

As Friday bedtime approached, I did what I was supposed to be doing, I wrote.  I wrote the summary for my next steam punk novel, Bats, Belfries and Belt Fed Bazookas and sent it off to Vivian with nothing else.  I did an edit on three chapters before sending them each off to the publisher. The publisher would then provide a very favorable report to Vivian of my efforts.

On Saturday morning I woke up twenty miles from my trailer in the middle of nowhere.  No cell phone signal, no roads, no geographic features, nothing but miles and miles of fields. I guessed which way a road is.  When this first started happening I discovered one thing about America, the furthest you are from a road in any direction is 47 miles, and that is around Yellowstone.  If the teleportations were staying consistent, then I was less than 20 miles from a road.  So, I picked a direction towards the rising sun and started walking.  I got to my trailer around 6 pm that night.  I had a tough time charting my route, the area I ended up in was very featureless and I am not a navigator, wayfinder or orienteering expert.

Along my long walk I had made a decision, I had never returned to my endpoint again to sleep. So, I packed up my trailer and moved it as close as I could to where I think I ended up this morning.   I knew I shouldn’t have done it, I parked along a dirt road, probably a private dirt road on someone’s ranch and someone might take offense at a stranger parking his truck and trailer on their road.  I went to sleep that night apprehensively.  I was not sure if this was close enough to where  I ended up that morning.  I was uncertain if I would teleport that night.  Maybe someone would pound on my trailer that night demanding that I move off their private property.  But after my 20 mile walk that day and then moving my trailer, I was exhausted and laid down to sleep.

I teleported two hundred yards that night.

From the longest teleportation to the shortest.

This was not making any sense.  What were the rules for distance, sometimes far, sometimes close?

And I would have to wait another six days, maybe more get more data.

I moved to a campsite in Bent County.  I paid for a site in  Mapes Lakeview RV Campground Bait and Grocery, in Hasty, Colorado.  Both my teleportations had been in a westward direction from Lamar.  It eliminated Baca County.

I was a little leery about setting up at the campsite near John Martian Reservoir a very large manmade lake, and while I can swim the water was very cold this time of year.

That week I wrote, and I wrote some more.  I locked myself in my trailer every morning till I produced a thousand new words.  I had lunch, edited what I wrote the previous day and when a chapter was finished, I sent it off to be proofed and edited by my publisher.  I avoided my e-mails, I figured this was the best way to make it up to Vivian.  I missed a call from my daughter who left a voice mail saying she just wanted to chat.  I called her back but it went straight to voice mail, so I apologized for missing her call.

After I completed my writing for the day I drove around till sunset.  I drove around trying to familiarize myself with the area so if I did pop up somewhere on Saturday and Sunday morning, I would have a good idea where I was.  The problem with this part of Colorado is it’s a lot of unremarkable fields, sort of a continuation of Kansas to the east.

I stopped at the local library.  Writers love libraries, I have never met one yet that has not. We, writers, love to read, and someplace that loans books for free, well sign us up.  I wandered the stacks and my vanity won out and I looked for my stuff on the shelves. No matter what library I am exploring my vanity always wins out eventually.

They had everything I had ever written.  In fact, I had my own shelf.  That was surprising, most public libraries may have a couple of my books, but not all of them.  They even had my latest fantasy novel, Morning Stars at Midnight.  Hardcover, only out a month, not on the New York Times Bestseller list. Yet.  Why does a small-town library, in, no offense, in the middle of nowhere, have all my books?  I have been to libraries in very affluent areas and the most I have ever seen before is about seventy-five percent of my books, and then the most current one was about three months old.

“Excuse me miss.”  I said to the young girl behind the counter.

“Yes, sir can I help you find something?”

“No, but I did have a question.”

“I will help you if I can.”

“You seem to have all the books from a writer,  Charles S. Neilsen.”

She looked confused.  “I am sorry I am not sure what you question is.”

“You have all of his books, even his most current one, that seems a little strange.”

Again, the confused look on her face then she replied.  “I don’t really know, Mrs. Hargrove is in charge of buying all our books, she might be able to answer your question.”

“Is she here?”

The girl shook her head.  “No, she just left a couple of hours ago, she went to a Librarian Convention in Denver. But she should be back here on Monday.”

I nodded.  “Okay, thank you.”  I said as I walked away confused.  This was the first time that I had noticed something strange in relation to me.  Did it mean anything?

But this being Thursday, I had another day to ponder things before I might gather some more data.

I was wrong.

Friday morning, I woke up half a mile from my camper almost in the village of Hasty.  Almost due north of where I went to sleep.  I had never teleported on a Thursday night.

Why.

Why.

I got back to my campsite with almost no stares, although two cars slowed down as they passed me on the road.  Which was perfectly normal, it’s not every day  a man walks around  barefoot in his boxer briefs at dawn.  I had not been prepared for this teleportation so I had not dressed for it.  It was a Thursday night after all.

What had changed?  Was it something I did?

After throwing on some clothes and washing my feet I lay down on my bed and cried.

Just a few tears.  Okay it was full on, downright sobbing, runny nose, blubbering.  The whole thing.  I was just so tired and now this new wrinkle.  Would I start teleporting on random days of the week?

I had not cried since this whole thing began.  I got angry.  I kicked some things, broke a coffee mug, shook my hand at the sky but no crying.

There were no answers, just more questions and this was throwing my whole life into disarray.  For the last six months, my teleportations have become almost normal, almost predictable.  On a majority of Fridays and Saturdays, I teleported somewhere.  Not more than twenty miles and sometimes not at.  Now I am teleporting on a Thursday.

After half an hour I was cried out.  I got up, made myself a fried bologna sandwich and decided to solve this thing, finally.  I moved my trailer 20 miles along the same azimuth of where I had moved this morning.   I was parked off the side of a dirt road, grazing land owned by the Bureau of Land Management.   Everything was brown and dried out.  I made my preparations for a translocation that night.

It happened.  Almost 18 miles.  But my research had paid off.  I knew where I was.

After my strenuous morning walk I plotted my trip.  It was almost the exact opposite of the azimuth from the previous day.  The previous day I had gone on a course that was 358 degrees, almost due North.  This morning, I traveled on a magnetic course of 178 degrees, almost due South.  Was something or someone in the village of Hasty, Colorado right off Highway 50 making me teleport.

Hasty, Colorado has a population of 184 people and is made up of small ranch style homes, manufactured home, one church, no schools and a volunteer fire department.   So, what was pulling me he every Friday and Saturday and one Thursday night.

Should I move my trailer into Hasty tonight and see what happened?

In navigation if you had two azimuths and they intersected it was called a plot.  Somewhere between the two points was my destination.  I decided to move my trailer just west of town and see what happened.

After picking out a spot about 7 miles I drove around Hasty.  Not hard, its only 7 North to South Streets, and 13 streets running from East to West, none longer than a mile.  I imagine there were some people noticing my truck and trailer going up and down the roads in the small town on that Saturday afternoon but I was beyond caring about being noticed at this point.  I simply wanted answers.

I went to sleep that night with high hopes.

Nothing happened.

I slammed my head into my mattress when I woke, I was still here.  No answers.

Why.

I screamed all kinds of things as I banged around the trailer making coffee.  Was it a fluke, was it totally random.  Had all my calculations been wrong,

I needed to think.  I went back to the RV park just south of Hasty and paid for another week.  With my place for the week secure I sat down and drank.  I was unsure what else to do.  I got nicely buzzed and fell into bed with a combination of anger and depression.

I got in my untethered truck the next morning with a hangover and a desire for something other than my own cooking.  Something greasy, fried and hot.  The biscuits and gravy at the 6^th Street diner in Las Animas hit the spot.  It was when I was driving back to my trailer that it all came together.

I drove by it first, not believing my eyes.

Plain as day, and something that belonged more in the 1970s than today.  A full sized metallic brown Chevy van with a custom paint job on both sides, of my heroine, Alexa Dawn wielding her battle axe.  The red of her hair perfectly matching the magical flames coming off her battle axe.  Next to the van was a small compact car, but with two bumper stickers, one proclaimed that their other vehicle was Pintella the Dragon, and the other stated “Back Off Or I Will Unsheathe Burning Bedlam”.   Both were deep references to my fantasy books.  I also made about a penny off each authorized bumper sticker.

Then I saw the name on the mailbox, Hargrove.  It took me a second  to remember the name, the librarian who had all my books on the shelves.

No way was this a coincidence.

But what do I do?  Just go up and knock.  “Excuse me, but are you performing magic that is teleporting me towards your house most Friday and Saturday nights?”    I wondered if they would allow me to write in the insane asylum.  Poe, Plath, Hemingway, Pound, and Tolstoy, to name of few writers, had spent time in institutions with padded walls.  Did I think I was better than F. Scott Fitzgerald?    I wondered if my books would sell better with the headlines that a nutter had written them.

I did not have to go up to the door.  As I sat there looking at the house a car came down and let two people off in front of the house.  The two people did not notice me until the car had pulled off.  Really only one of the two noticed me.  There was a figure bundled up in a parka with the hood pulled up and cinched tight just giving them a tunnel for vision.  I could not tell if it was a boy or girl in the parka, but the other was an overweight young man in a white shirt and dark slacks,  he noticed me when he went to the mailbox as the other person made a beeline for the garage door of the house.  He noticed me and stared at me quizzically.  It was then that I worked up the courage to be declared crazy.

“Hello.”  I said as I got out of my truck, waving in the friendliest way possible.

“Hi.”  The young man said waving a bundle of mail in my general direction.  By this time the other person had gone in the house, it was just the two of us out here on a brisk Colorado Sunday morning.

“I was wondering if you could help me.”

The wary look on his face showed me this kid was still unsure of me.

“Whose van is that?”  I said motioning to the escaped vehicle from the 70s.

The kid smiled.  “Oh, that is my buddies, Toth’s, pretty cool huh?”

“Yeah, he must be a big fan of the Shields of Stone and Snow.”  I stated.

“He sure is, we all are.” He said, smiling again. “My name is Gordon.  My friend Toth is inside if you want to meet him?”

“Well, if it would be no trouble, I don’t want to intrude.”  I said purposefully not sharing my name.

“Oh no, come in, we are going to make some pizza and then play some D and D based on the series.” Gordon said motioning towards the front door.

These were fans I thought smiling.  I checked my pocket for my phone.  “Just a minute I need to send a text; tell my friends I will be a few minutes late. “  Visions of Stephen King’s Misery flashed through my head; James Caan being hobbled by Kathy Bates and being forced to type.  As I walked towards the house, I typed to my kids to call me in an hour.”

My kids had an app on their phones tracking my location as I crossed the US.  If something happened to me in this regular-looking house at least they would have a good starting point to begin looking for me.  I wondered if I would make a whole true crime podcast or just a segment on Unsolved Mysteries.

Inside the house was normal, except for the books.

“Hey Toth, this guy wants to ask you about your van.”  Gordon yelled as we entered the foyer.

“I ain’t covering up Sheild Maiden Alexa, I don’t care what you Bible thumpers say, the Sheriff declared it was a Freedom of Speech issue.”  A voice yelled from the kitchen.

Another voice, female yelled after him.  “We would sell it for the right price.”

“Bite your tongue woman.”  The playful voice of Toth came back hastily.

Gordon smiled at me. “They kid around a lot.”   He led me through the short hallway into the living room area, it was decorated in books, bookshelves, bookcases, and books on tables. But in the center of the living room was a massive round wooden table with all the accoutrements of an ongoing Dungeons & Dragon campaign by serious players.

“Hey guy meet-“

“It’s him.” A goth-looking young lady said from the kitchen area that was separated from the living room by a breakfast bar.

“It’s who?”  The guy who could only be Toth said.  Toth had big broad shoulders and a full red beard and was wearing an apron that had Spock saying, “Live Long and Bake”.  Turning around Toth had a tray full of hot cookies.   He dropped the cookies when he saw me.

‘Who? Gordon said in response.

“You are him, aren’t you? Goth girl said.

“I think so.”  I said.  I sometimes had fun with people recognizing people.

Toth was just staring at me shocked.

Gordon was still looking confused.

“Welcome Charles S. Neilsen.” Toth said.  He pounded his oven mitt covered fist to his chest in the traditional warrior greeting in my books.

Gordon looked at me. Then his mouth dropped open, and he pointed to me then looked at his friends, then back at me.   “You are really Charles S. Neilsen.”

I saw one of my books sitting on a table, I picked it up and held the back cover up which had a very nice photograph of me, in black and white, besides my face. “In the flesh.”

“What?”  The goth girl said again.

“It is such an honor to meet you Mr. Neilsen,”  Toth said while stepping over the spilled cookies with an outstretched oven mitt.  “I have, we have read all your books, at least twice.”

“Except, the political thriller.”  Gordon said.

“Yeah, we didn’t really like that.”  Toth said. “But everything else we loved.”

“Well, it was me trying to branch out, to tell you the truth I didn’t enjoy it as much when I finished it as when I started it.”  I answered.

“Hi, I am Laura, Toth’s wife.”  The goth looking young lady said.

“Nice to meet your Laura.”  I said.  The next few minutes were a bit chaotic, between cleaning up cookies, me being offered lemonade, and Toth making the wrong assumption that I wanted to sue him over his use of  copyrighted material on his van.  I assured him I was not litigious about such things.   We eventually sat down around the large D and D table.  I explained that I was staying in my trailer just down the road and I saw the van.  I did not share the rest of the reason I was drawn to this area and this home in particular.

“My mother is going to be so disappointed when she gets home.”  Gordon stated.

“Why?”

“Oh, she is a librarian and she buys all your books.”  Gordon answered.

“Yeah, so you can read them in first in hardcover.”  Toth said.

Gordon looked at me apologetically. “I am sorry, I just can’t afford them when they first come out, but I have all your books in paperback.”

“Hey as long as you are reading them and enjoying them, that is all I care about.” I said smiling. “My publisher gives a huge discounts to libraries buying my books.”

“Oh, that is nice of you.”  Laura said.

The conversation lagged. I could tell they wanted to ask me questions about my books, but they seemed a little overwhelmed to ask anything.  I knew once they started asking it would be a tidal wave of geeky questions, so I decided to ask my questions first.

“So how long have you been playing D and D?”

They shared they had been playing together since they were in middle school, but this new campaign based on my books started in December of this year.  I made a note of that; it  did not match up with the beginning of my teleportation.  They were all enthusiastic in their enjoyment of the game play, Toth was the Dungeon Master, and they had another player, Franky who was coming over soon to play.

I made a face of confusion. “So, Gordon who was the other person coming into the house with you?”

“Oh, that was my little sister.”  Gordon paused. “Can I bring her out to meet you?”

“Sure, no problem.”

Gordon excused himself and went down the hall. Laura spoke up.  “Ah Mr. Neilsen, just to let you know, Gordon’s sister, Mary, is on the autism spectrum.”

I nodded.  “Thank you for telling me, Laura.”

Toth turned towards the hallway. “Princess Mary, we have an honored visitor who wishes to meet you.”

A young girl, about 16, was coming down the hallway holding Gordon’s hand.  Her eyes were downcast and she moved slowly.   “Hello Princess Mary.”

She shook her head.  “Only Toth calls me that, my name is Mary.”  She said quickly. Then she looked at my face, really intently.  “You are Mr. Charles S. Neilsen.”

“Yes I am.”

“You have written seventeen books, and your new one is supposed to come out next year.”

“Hopefully.”  I said.

“On your newest book, Morning Stars at Midnight, there is a misspelling of the word pudding, on page 57, its spelled puding, its missing a D.”

“I will have to talk to my publisher.”  I replied.

“Would you like to sit out here and listen to us Mary.”  Laura asked.

Mary nodded and went to a chair in the corner and sat down, turned slightly away from the group.

There was an impressed looking around the room. Laura leaned over.  “That is the most she has ever talked to a stranger the first time she met them.

I simply nodded. “So do you guys play every night”  I said motioning towards the game table.

Gordon laughed.  “Oh no, my Mom only lets us take over the living room on Friday and Saturday nights.  Plus, Toth and Mary have to work during the week.”

Toth added.  “Except this week we played on Thursday, with Mrs. Hargrove out of town, we went a little crazy.”

I must have let my face show surprise, luckily these kids did not know why I was surprised, except a big clue was uncovered.

Toth addressed my surprised look. “I mean we don’t play every Friday and Saturday night; we went to the rodeo a couple of weeks ago, and we also went to the movies to see the new MCU movie what about two weeks ago.  Its not like this is all we do.”

“We didn’t even play last night because Franky had to go see his grandmother, but we are playing as soon as he comes over.”  Gordon said.

Well that cleared up, why sometimes I was not teleported against my will.  “You say you have been playing this campaign since December.”

They nodded. “We watched the Dr. Who Christmas Special on Christmas Day and the next day, was a Saturday so we started the new campaign then.”  Laura said.

I nodded thoughtfully.  “Can I ask you a strange question?”

“Sure.”  Toth said speaking for the group and the others just nodded as well.

“Did something different happen, around February, the weekend after Valentines Day?”

“We went up to Denver for a Valentines Day trip.”  Laura said as a reference point.

“Oh yeah.”  Toth said.

“You guys got this table up there.”  Gordon said rapping on the table.

“This table.” I said looking at it, but it was covered with role playing game map with hexagonal spaces.  “Can I look at it”

There were confused looks around the table but they just nodded, but first they took a picture of where all the game pieces were first.

The table was wooden, with a dark oxblood color, such a deep red it was almost black. It had been varnished deeply and had an almost glasslike quality.  Around the edge of the table were numerous runes, not just Scandinavian but some other alphabets that I was not familiar with.

“Where did you get this table?” I asked Toth.

“We saw a sign, that this old hotel was selling its furniture, we stopped on a whim.”

Laura volunteered.  “The Overlook Hotel.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”  Toth said smiling at his wife.

“You guys didn’t tell me that when your brought it here.”  Gordon said with a bit of shocked look on his face.

“I didn’t think it mattered, we only paid ten bucks for this thing.” Toth said rapping on it.

“That place is haunted.”  Gordon said.

Toth dismissed it with a wave.

“And the way my mother talks about that whole valley, it was cursed by the Native Americans.”

“It’s a table.”  Toth said.

I took a deep breath and decided to spill the beans on why I was here.  But then a voice came from the corner of the room. “I wish on it. “

The four of us turned towards Mary who had been sitting in the corner of the room just listening.

Laura got up and walked over to the couch near Mary.  “You wish on the table?”

Mary simply nodded.

“What do you wish Mary?”  I asked quietly.

“I wished I could meet the person who told these stories, she said motioning towards the tables and all of my battered paperbacks that were on the nearby shelf. “At the end of each of your games, as I listened to you guys tell stories, I would touch the table where you guys played and wish I could meet the storyteller.”

And there it was the answer to what was going on.  A little girl was wishing on a strange table from a possibly haunted, possibly cursed place to bring me here.  It was magic.

I thought very hard on what to say next. I addressed the group.  “What are the rules for magic in my books? Not just my books but a lot of rules for fictional books and movies and TV shows?”

Laura spoke up. “Power, focus, and effect.”

I nodded.  “Correct, power, usually in the form of magical item; focus, the tool or spell that directs the power from the item; and effect, the resulting change in the world.”

“But that is just fiction, there is nothing like magic.”  Gordon said.

“Let me tell you a story.”  And for the next hour I told them what had been happening to me for the last six months I told them about the things appearing in my trailer and the times I thought I was going crazy.  I told them how it had messed up my life, how my writing was suffering, how I was afraid of flying on a plane and I had not seen my kids since this since this all started.  By the end I was exhausted and a few tears had come down my face.

Okay, a lot of crying.  It felt so good to tell someone.  Even these people who were basically strangers, even worse they were fans.  What were they going to think of me?

They were quiet for a few minutes, the three of them looked at each other.  Being an outsider, I had no idea what was going on between them. Gordon gave one more look at his friends, and they all nodded. “We have got to get rid of this table.”

“It’s the power.”  Laura said quietly.

“Did I do something wrong.”  The very quiet voice of Mary came from the corner.

Laura was the first to say something. “Absolutely not Mary.”

“Princess Mary never does anything wrong.”  Toth said smiling.

“No, Mary you did nothing wrong.” Gordon added.

I was tempted to stay silent.  Mary trusted these people more than she trusted me.  “I am glad you got your wish Mary.”

She smiled.

“We still need to get rid of the table.”  Toth said.  “I am thinking we need to burn it.”

“I say we take off and nuke the entire table from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure”.  Gordon said.

“Nice.”  I said and put up a hand for Gordon to high five me.

Gordon got a big grin and high fived me.

Toth led the charge and we moved the large heavy table out the back door.  He made a big point of protecting fingers from getting pinched. The kids were joking with me not to hurt my fingers as they wanted the next book soon.  We got it out onto the neighborhood burn pit and with the hope of a few discarded pallets and a quart of kerosene we had the table blazing in no time.

Unfortunately, the Fire Chief who only lived a block away came and cited Gordon for burning things on a Sunday.  I gave Gordon fifty bucks to pay the fine, best money I ever spent.  While the table was burning their other D and D player, Franky showed up.  He was shocked that I was there, and his friends from all the way back from Middle School were acting like old friends with me.

The table went up in flames like a normal table, no green flashes of light, no mysterious clouds of smoke, no spectral screaming, just a wooden table burning till nothing was left but ashes.

I took the kids out to dinner and we had great conversations, about my writing, about their lives.  I told stories about comic book conventions and famous people I met; they told me about other authors they liked.  We guessed about the things teleporting into my trailer. Gordon thought maybe it was some sort of cosmic balancing act. It was a good theory as anything.  I promised to hang around and meet Mrs. Hargrove and I even ordered them a new table to play D and D on, seeing as how they had burnt the one they had to save me from unplanned and random teleportation.

Categories: Fantasy & Political, Outrageous Lies and Tales

Tags: crying, D & D, D and D, fifth wheel, ford F250, Hasty Colorado, magic, short story, Stephen King, teleportation, trailer, truck