‘Returning’ Archives
RETURNING CHAPTER 18: TESSERACT
By PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL Your author has asked you to suspend disbelief on more than one occasion. That a multi-million dollar criminal enterprise disguised as a non-profit can be hidden in plain site in the part of East Phillips once known as “the swale.” That a 4-year-old could expertly call 911 and communicate exact details. That tunnels and passageways can appear out of nowhere. But feature this: we are asked to suspend disbelief all the time. Or maybe it’s suspend belief (which it our crazy world, can amount to the same thing). We are asked to believe that there is liberty and justice for all, that anyone can become President, that if you just work hard enough, you can do anything, that it’s just a few “bad apples” that spoil (take your pick: the police, the NFL, the entertainment industry), that the Vikings will win the Super Bowl if they just get the right: coach, GM, quarterback, kicker. So why should it surprise you that our blessed little family, under [...]
CHAPTER 17: BY SURE FORCE
by Patrick Cabello Hansel Either by sure force of luck or Divine Providence, little Angel’s phone call to 911 coincided with a massive blackout for the entire neighborhood of Phillips. The hospitals and fire station automatically switched to backup, but houses, stores and the garage numbered 2647 were plunged into instant darkness. The garage, where Brian Fleming was holding our little family hostage, was plunged into total chaos. The lights in the basement went out immediately, emergency lights and piercing alarms came on. Upstairs, they could hear people cursing and moving around, bumping into furniture. Only the space behind the steel door that Brian was leading Luz through was illuminated: the central nervous system of the whole operation, where money and lives were manipulated through the dark web. Brian had installed huge, sophisticated batteries in a sub basement dug deep into the ground. They would keep the servers and computers running for a long time. He didn’t [...]
Returning Chapter 16: Split Screen
by Patrick Cabello Hansel Picture this if you will: in one frame, Brian Fleming lording it over our poor family; drawing out the encounter in the basement in search of his own twisted pleasure. Luz has faced his evil before, as a young girl, an encounter that scarred her, but one which she has overcome through tears and sheer force of will. Angel, her husband, knows but a little of this part of his wife’s story. He is trying to keep his anger in check so as to not antagonize this man, who holds — somewhere, God knows where — his beloved daughter Lupita as ransom. Ransom for what, Angel can only guess. In another frame, little Lupita is sitting on a rug with a race track pattern. The asphalt lanes abut images of the pit stop, grandstand and concession areas. She was playing with a Match Box Car, racing it around the track, but now she is playing with an old stuffed rabbit, who looks as if he has been in too many scrapes with angry gardeners. One of the rabbit’s [...]
