Laura's Story, John Stormm [top 20 books to read TXT] 📗

good things happening around the hospital; things were looking rather ominous for us. For reasons beyond my understanding, my dosimeter badge was repeatedly showing overexposure to massive doses of radiation, and not the type easliy identified in the kinds of equipment I was working around. Each has its own specific radiation signature. For my first four years working in that clinic, my dosages were well below even the dosages commonly absorbed in the Emergency Room. Which is to say, very reasonably small. Now there were massive overexposures, and I had to be moved to different parts of the hospital to avoid any more exposure.

Laura was planning upon selling her dad's old house, that she and Rusty grew up in. Rusty was doing well in an engineering job in Arizona, and Laura had met and hit it off with some of my old unit members of the "Disney Toons", from back in my active Ultra days, and they seemed to enjoy swapping stories about all the crazy shit they've seen me do on the job. Most of them were living out west, and out of the cold damp weather that makes an old warhorse feel every old injury. So Laura had me come over to help move some furniture and get the house ready for sale. It took the better part of a couple years to sell it, but eventually she did, and then she moved out to her brother's house in Arizona, until she could find something on her own.

As long as we had Witchclan.com, it was no problems with her keeping us abreast of all the latest news. I got to hear from some of my old friends, and Laura had a bunch of new and humorous stories to share with us all. She tried out a few covens out there, and after more than a few years exposure with myself and other Witchclanners, she pretty much declared that some witches were just "plain old goddamned crazy as batshit". Eventually, she met a few worthy witches that she could relate to.

Among all the ex-specs and black ops boys living in the same area, as many of the Disney Toons had settled in, Laura met Rolf and that seemed to be a match made in heaven. I'm not sure if he ever became aware that she was nearly twice his age. But Laura was moving about to avoid detection, and as she certainly didn't look like she was nearing upon 60, I saw no reason to let that cat out of the bag. She was happy. Though Rolf was not particularly happy about a poster sized pin up of myself hanging in Laura's bedroom. Laura has all her own kinks and quirks, and will have her way. So that poster was staying put, whether Rolf liked it or not.

It might better soothe his feelings to know, that I have never slept with his favorite girl. Before she left for Arizona, Laura had managed to catch me in a bad bet. Usually, I don't bet at all unless I've got information that I'm pretty certain of. So it's a bad idea to bet me on anything at all. But this one had a tricky side to it, and as loser, I had to submit to have some nude pictures of myself taken. Which she then gathered up, and had made into her own calendar pin-ups, that she shared with some of the other witches at WitchClan. I can't remember exactly what the bet was all about, but I think I was Mr. October or November on that calendar, as Witch of The Month. One of these, she had blown up into a huge poster, that she hung in her bedroom, with all due humor of things hung, hanging so... and even if I could find a copy of it, I'm not posting it here... at least not ALL of it.

A contact was made with "Minnie Mouse", which was our old go-to gal and CIA liason with the Disney Toons, way back in our active days. She leaked it out to our former unit leader, "Mickey Mouse" aka "Iron Mike", that the spooks had dosed my diabetic insulin with snake venom. I was about half way into a tainted vial, when I noticed I was bleeding out of a few unsettling orifices, and ditched about six bad vials out of that batch. It was good news to get, but nobody in our unit, and especially Laura trusted the CIA. We all just figured that it might just be a plan by them, to help get Minnie back into everyone's good graces and handle us all some more. But it had the opposite effect, and the gang started changing addresses a bit more frequently. After an attempt on my life, by a suspicious pair of contractors at the hospital, that had nearly electrocuted me; I too left the hospital and my old apartment for parts unknown.

 For the past couple years or so now, all of us have been moving about, getting information out to people who can make use of it. Helping out at rallies, and protests, concerning the corrupt government that is plaguing us all. For my 60th birthday, Laura had made and sent me a strawberry pie. She knows how I loathe birthday cakes. But with me, a good piece of pie, will always make up for a lousy meal. A couple weeks after that I had some more contact with her about some problems that I was undergoing with my family, and she was working out when she could bake me yet another pie, or help in some other way. It was after that, when I got the text from Laura's phone, from Rolf, that she had taken on an under-the-table waitressing job to raise some extra cash, and was hurt bad, in a head on car crash by a drunk driver. She was almost 2000 miles away, and there was nothing I could do to help or save her from this threat. Rolf and the surviving Toons, had assured me that this would be the very last DWI. that this drunk would ever get. Nothing more needed to be said beyond that. I know that drill.

 I spent years of my life, devoted to raising and training my children to be nobody's victims. I once heard my daughter Bex remark how I should relate to a movie called "Fish Story". It was a story about a man, that told his kids a bunch of tall tales about his life. There was a kind of magic to the ending, but it left me feeling sad: That after all of her years, sharing my skills and training with them, and seeing me, and themselves do things, that most other kids only ever see in action movies, that she would regard my life as "fish tales". In reality, I really haven't shared the half with them, or anyone else, of all of what I really have been through. Most of it gives me real pain to relive, even in recollections. I feel bad for that, and I reckon that I will not share another word with my children about anything after this.

 

There was this one gal, who was with me, and followed my deeds, for easily the past 40 years. Laura knew where the fish tales ended, and the truth began. And she heard MOST of those tales, from sources other than myself. I would have liked them all to have met, and heard her tell those tales of back at Parkside Ambulance, or the stories from some of my old unit. I think their sleepwalking mother, and fellow church members managed to convince them all, that my life and what they could remember doing with me, could never have truly happened as such.

Everybody knows that life is all about going to church on Sundays, buying a home, raising a family and putting on your blinders faithfully, as you pull that cart in your work-a-day life, and be sure to pay your taxes. As more and more of my contemporaries die off, to one cause or another, I am sitting here alive, and watching everything that I ever did and stand for, reduced to "fish tales". And nobody's left, but a crazy old man like me, to say any differently about it. But you know how cranky and argumentive, us cranky old geezers can get. Who's ever going to believe that old crock of shit?

God, how sorely I miss Laura already! It would have been kinder, had I died with her, and she was such wonderful company to keep in all the times that I was privileged to know with her.

Imprint

Publication Date: 10-07-2013

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To My Favorite Witch... Laura