PSYCHOPATCHIC
Chapter 1
Dr. Faith Galloway rode the underground escalator during morning rush hour from the Blue Line Metro station to the familiar surface streets in Capitol Heights, Maryland. Shrouded in a black leather topcoat with matching boots, a cashmere scarf with tasseled ends, and tinted glasses dark enough to hide her eyes, she stepped off the moving escalator to confront the blustery winds driving the mercury into the teens.
Her gloved hand tapped a white cane on the cold concrete, controlling the tempo and force with her firm but malleable grip. She kept her weight on her back foot, tagging the sidewalk back and forth in a shoulder-wide arc as her right foot came forward in a synchronous, well-rehearsed motion. Despite the biting cold, she moved with swan-like elegance, focused on the sound of city traffic, the tactile crunch of sand and road salt underfoot—and the lingering sense of someone following her stride for stride to mask their own advance.
She stopped at the first crosswalk and heard vehicles traverse the busy intersection in front of her like missiles bound for mass destruction. She heard the sound of heavy machinery pounding frozen earth with teeth-jarring force while the smell of hot food and dry-cleaning solvents served landmark cues to confirm her exact location.
Hypersensitive to her surroundings, she felt a rush of air before a fast-moving figure brushed her arm and charged into the crosswalk, prompting a sequence of screeching tires and blaring horns. When the school of pedestrians surged around her en masse, she engaged the road with a steady cane tap, counting steps from one end of the street to the other. Her glasses dulled the glare from reflected sunlight, further distorting gray scale images of people and inanimate objects lurking silently at the boundaries of her fragmented peripheral vision governed by halos, floaters, and otherwise altered perceptions of her physical world.
Undeterred, she navigated the gauntlet of bus shelters, signposts, power poles, fire hydrants, lopsided manhole covers, and torn sections of chain link fence ensnarled in dead underbrush encroaching on the broken sidewalk. Recalling years of sighted memories stored and cataloged by significant events leading up to her accident, she continued three more blocks to a strip mall with vacant storefronts and a laundromat on the corner. She tapped the cane to probe the space between the sidewalk and the curb before she cautiously advanced toward the steady hum from a neon Cash for Gold sign behind a rebar-shielded window outside a local pawnshop.
She collapsed her folding cane into a short baton and stuffed the package and her gloves inside her jacket pocket. A loud buzzer granted access to the perennial establishment infused with the smell of old leather jackets, woodwind instruments, and light machine oil like the kind her foster father rubbed on his hunting rifle.
A blurry silhouette with fading contrast and no discernable features greeted her with a man’s raspy voice, the breath tainted by garlic and cigarettes. She tracked the sound of clanking metal on plate glass, employing short strides to minimize the chance of an inadvertent collision with another patron or a vertical support beam. When she reached the back of the store, she found a rectangular glass display and traced her fingers on the surface marred with tiny nicks and scratches.
“Can I help you?” the garlic breath voice engaged her.
Faith cleared her throat and turned her head to face the dark orb in front of her. “I’d like to buy a gun.”
© , Jason Melby. All Rights Reserved.
