Chapter 3

SOON

“No. Way.” Ram sat back in his office chair, ignoring it creaking in protest. “You’ve got to be kidding, they what?”

Jiji shrugged helplessly. “They’re already enacting the first regulations. Our shipments have dropped fifty percent.”
Ram buried his head in his hands. “Shhhiiiiitttttt,” he groaned, feeling close to tears. His warm fuzzies from the day before were long gone. First Itha had called him in the middle of an important meeting yesterday evening telling him she didn’t feel safe, so he’d had to deal with the embarrassment of bowing out of the conference to the many disapproving  glares of his peers, then he’d rushed home to find Itha standing at the kitchen sink trying to get her wrist to stop bleeding. She refused to go to the hospital, so Ram had spent the rest of the day with her on the couch, holding her as tight as his trembling arms could. He’d called Jiji, who’d been out walking Mikey, and within fifteen minutes, the four of them were squeezed together on the couch, all three humans crying, and Mikey trying his best to comfort them all at once. Once they had sort of calmed down, Ram and Jiji had spent the next three hours trying to talk Itha into getting help, but to no avail. So Jiji came up with the compromise that either he, Ram, or one of their other friends would at least be in the same vicinity as her at all times.

And if the night had been thought to be the worst it could be, they were about to be sorely mistaken. They’d gotten an urgent call from one of their old friends in the industry, Kyle Denigue, frantically asking if they had seen his husband, who just so happened to be another incredibly important company CEO. Ram and Saul had been sharing an office complex for the last three years, and their families had become quite close over those years, starting with a mishap of a chair thrown through drywall into an office belonging to the other company. The relationship had flourished since.

“He said he might drop by and visit you guys?” Kyle had desperately asked, his voice shaking. Upon assuring him that Saul hadn’t set foot in their house for the past week, Jiji decided to go over and keep Kyle company while Ram and Itha turned in for the night with Mikey.

By morning it was official; Saul was gone, and no one knew where, though everyone could take a reasonable guess. Jiji had traded places with Itha, who had gone to Kyle’s home to help him cope with Saul’s kidnapping, and now, to make matters worse, Jiji was telling Ram that the government, which was slowly working their way out of the umpteenth shut-down, had started off their supposed ‘new-life’ by enacting environmental laws on many of the less than sustainable industries. Fine. Ram didn’t have a problem with it. Until, that is, Jiji announced that quite literally overnight, their company income had dropped until they were losing millions of dollars on their now-limited cargo shipments.

“Why is everything going wrong now?” he demanded, frustrated beyond anything he’d ever felt before, except for maybe that time as a baby he’d been unable to express to his parents his need for his blankie. Certainly this was on a larger scale, but somewhere deep inside, he was still indignant at the thought of that blanket, there, just out of reach, and how no one would get it for him.

I digress.

“I don’t know,” Jiji replied, shrugging helplessly. “I wish Anthony was here. He’d know what to do.”

“Yeah, well,” Ram grumbled. “He’s not. I am. So I have to clean up this mess for him.”

Both Jiji and Anthony looked at him, shocked.

Okay, first off, pal, ouch, Anthony began, at exactly the same time Jiji asked, “Ram, are you okay? You don’t look so hot.”

Ram suddenly felt obtusely angry, for, and he knew it, no good reason. Maybe just because of the floating dead person.

He forced a smile at Jiji. “I’m good, I just am behind. I gotta catch up, you know? Why don’t you go home?”

We’ve always been honest in this family, Anthony reminded Ram. And right now, you, sir, are not being honest.

“Sure thing, dude,” Jiji saud, standing to leave. “I’ll go pick up Itha, it’s getting late.”

Ram grit his teeth into as close an approximation of a smile as he could until Jiji had softly closed the door, then he whipped around to Anthony, making his chair complain again.

“We’ve talked about this,” he spat. “You, sir, are dead. Get the hell out of my head. If you wanted that bad to be with me, with us, you’d still be here, really here. Leave me alone.”

Ram, baby, I can’t control what your own mind creates, Anthony said in that normally-comforting-now-infuriating way of his. You’re high. You’re tired. You’re not feeling well, Itha’s depressed, and your workload just tripled. You created me to cope, dude.

“Don’t you ‘Ram, baby’ me,” Ram snapped. “And don’t point out my problems. I’ve got it covered, no thanks to you. I did not create you to cope.

He sat back in his chair, fury bubbling inside him. The chair groaned quietly.

I’ddd...be careful with that chair it sounds like it’s going to - oh, yup, there she blows.

With a soft sigh, the chair broke underneath Ram, sending him pitching backwards into oblivion for one terrifying instant before his tookus smacked itself down in the middle of the wreckage.

Y’all right there? Anthony asked, leaning against a shelf.

It was all too much for poor Ram. With a howl of rage, he took a leg from the unfortunate chair and hurled it at his friend, doing the hallucination no damage, but boy, did that wall learn its lesson.

After that, there wasn’t much left to do besides curl into a ball and cry for a while. The office was empty, so at least he didn’t have to worry about worried colleagues coming to check on him.

When Ram glanced up at Anthony, he was gone, leaving only the wang-doodled wall, which bleakly presented itself to Ram, in an almost accusatory manner.

Ram cried some more.

“And then I came here,” Ram said miserably. Cal let the silence stew for a minute, before letting out a breath.

“Oof, buddy, you really are messed up. Here, have a camo blanket, that’ll make you feel better.”

Ram accepted the proffered gift, wrapping it around him. It was one of those weighted anxiety blankets, and apparently they worked, because he did slowly start to feel better.

“Is there anyone you should let know you’re here?” Cal asked, glancing at Ram’s phone from it’s forlorn position on the basement kitchen island. Ram shook his head; Itha and Jiji wouldn’t be expecting him back for a few hours yet, which had given him time to call Cal, who had immediately offered to pick him up and take Ram to his home, an offer Ram had gladly accepted. So here they were in Cal’s basement which was remarkably drug-free. Sure, there was a small stove in one corner with suspicious looking contents, but other then that, the place was clear.

“I feel bad for yelling at him,” Ram said quietly. “Which is stupid, he’s dead, and wasn’t even there. But it wasn’t his fault, either.”

“Aye,” Cal said softly. “I imagine you would feel bad. But try not to worry about it, alright? How many doses have you had today? You surpassed our limit?”

Ram shook his head. There was one thing he wouldn’t do. During the week, he and Cal had worked out a dosage limit that Ram shouldn’t go over, since Cal said he was worried Ram might. So far, Ram had held tight to that. It was one of the only things he could control anymore.

“Well, hey, there’s a start. But listen, don’t kick your cat over your fight with ghost dude. You’re tired, and need some sleep. If you need a place, my couch is yours and all that.”

“Thanks, but I’d better get home,” Ram sighed. “Thanks though,” he repeated.

“Ah think nothing of it,” Cal said with a sigh, standing and offering Ram a hand up. “I’ll drive you home.”

“Thanks,” Ram re-repeated, and received a hug for his troubles.

“You absolutely sure we can’t get you down to the mariwana?” Cal asked, accenting the word funny. “I’ve got a starter kit right here, that should help you break the heroin habit.”

“Maybe,” Ram said, not too sure about the idea. It seemed too much work to switch now, and he didn’t care that much.

“Well, don’t sound too excited. Alright, but you let me know.” Together they walked out the door, and Cal drove Ram home in silence.

“I’m back,” Ram called wearily as he stepped into the house. Mikey bounded up to greet him, and he heard a welcoming call from the living room.

“You got some interesting mail,” Jiji said as Ram walked into the room. He and Itha sat on the couch, re-watching Sherlock. On the table in front of them was the special, enormous popcorn bowl they reserved for occasions such as these when the only thing to do was to binge-watch an entire series (or four), in one sitting.

“Oh?” Ram asked, bending down to kiss Itha, relieved to see her smile at him. He went over to the counter, seeing a large envelope sitting there. It looked like classic junk mail, but something about it was a bit too refined for that. Ram groaned. The bold, proud type in the upper corner claimed it to be from Rhino Shipping, Wiggins’ company.

“This can’t be good,” Ram said, taking the envelope and sinking down into a kitchen chair. “It’s probably a letter of foreclosure or something.”

So it wasn’t, I would say, a pleasant surprise when he opened it and found no warnings or blaring lights, but it was a less unpleasant one. Inside was a simple sheaf of papers, titled very simply as SURVEY OF OWNER’S NOTIONS, which abbreviated quite simply (and ominously) to SOON. All of this was very simple, as you can tell. What was not simple, was the frankly enormous quantity of paper within this sheaf. Not to mention the tiny, tiny print that swam across each page like lines of hungry checkbox piranhas.

“What the heck is this?” Ram asked, giving the papers a good ol’ frisbee across to his friends. It was a good thing the bundle was tied together with a lovely ribbon, or physics would have done its job and there would have been SOON papers floating down from the heavens for days.

“Beats the heck out of me,” Jiji said, catching the papers and untying the neat bow. “My question is why they wrapped it up like a Christmas present.” He began flipping through the papers, shaking his head every few seconds.

“This is bizarre, but I think it’s just another ploy to get more businesses. He’s asking all sorts of questions here, about your mental states, physical states, so on and so forth. I think you have to do it,” Jiji finished with a sigh, carefully re-tying the ribbon and spinning it back to Ram. “There’s some pretty official looking authorization on there, it looks like he’s teamed up with some hoity-toity organization.”

“That,” Ram said, staring at the papers. “Is going to take me years.”

Jiji shrugged. “I don’t think so. You could probably do it all tonight if you were dedicated.”

Ram groaned. “Aw, come on, it’s already eleven. I was hoping to get to bed at a reasonable time tonight.”

“Come on, Trucker,” Itha said unexpectedly. “I’ll stay with you, we can do it together.”

“Really?” he looked up at her, a warm glow of gratitude filling his heart. “Are you sure you’re…”

“Yeah, I’m good,” she said, smiling wearily. “We’ll get this done faster with two of us.”

“Thanks,” Ram said, smiling back at her.

“Cool, I get to go to bed then,” Jiji said, stretching. “You two have fun.”

“Good night, Jij,” Itha said, and Ram gave his friend a cheerful wave.

“Okay,” Ram said as soon as Jiji was gone. “Lets see what this SOON thingy is all about.”