It’s All In Your Head

The first rock landed near Margaret’s ankle. She looked about wondering and then returned to digging out leaves from the flower boxes on the back of her house. The next rock landed a little further behind her. She looked again. The third rock hit the porch door beside her and she held up her garden claw tool to protect herself.

   Margaret raised herself up, with effort. She could not tell if something moved in the overgrown field beyond her fenced backyard. A rock hit the porch roof and rolled down beside her. She couldn’t see where it came from, or who it may have come from. The fatigue took over and she gave up and went inside.

   She drank water without being refreshed. She lay on the couch and quickly was asleep.

   Margaret woke to sharp knocking at the front screen door. She got up and looked out but no one was there. Rolling on the lawn was a bright beach ball. She stepped out to gather it. She saw no one, just the single lane highway and the fields that surrounded her rural home.

   There were two cars some distance down the road, parked on the gravel shoulder of her side. A stone cracked against the front of the house and Margaret did not move. Inward her shoulders and neck tightened but the fatigue kept her body from showing such reactions any more. She let the air out of the beach ball and held it until it decompressed then dropped it on the lawn.

   She went in, closing and locking the front door. She sat on the couch and fell asleep upright.

   Margaret woke the next day sore and knowing it might be days before she could do anymore gardening work again. She drank some water but felt no need to eat as nothing in her system was moving for her for several days now.

   In the afternoon she drove to town to pick up her medications.

   On the way back a car followed too closely to her. She slowed onto the shoulder to let it pass but it slowed with her and wouldn’t pass. She honked her horn and the other driver honked back. She looked back at the driver but he was holding a cell phone in front his face, taking her picture. She honked again, but he only honked back.

   She continued, driving slowly now. A second car came along her on the single lane road as if to pass her as well. She looked and it was yet another man holding a cell phone to take her picture. Both cars went along with her until she was home, turning into her drive.

    She got out and walked to the property edge to see them a little further down the road, idling. They revved their engines a she watched them.

   The fatigue overwhelmed Margaret’s fear and she locked herself in her home again and waited for them to go. Finally, falling asleep sitting up on the couch. 

   The next day she woke to a rock hitting the side of the house. After a while another rock hit the house. Then another. She did not go out to see where they were coming from.

   Around noon she called her friend, Tracy.

   “I think someone is throwing rocks at me, and yesterday they tried to run me off the road.” Tracy was much younger, healthier, kind but skeptical, and argued a number of things it might be to calm Margaret. Margaret insisted.

   Tracy compromised with, “Why don’t I take you to the Tea House tomorrow? And we’ll talk some more.”

   On that day Margaret heard no rocks against the house. She walked up the drive and saw no cars along the road.

   Tracy picked her up and they went to the Tea House in town. Tracy looked about embarrassed as Margaret lit up telling her of rocks, and road rage, and beach balls. Tracy only knew that Margaret hadn’t been able to work for years for with her medical conditions.

   As they left the Tea House a young man in the parking lot took their picture with a cell phone. He gave them a thumbs up and left with a swagger. On the drive back, even Margaret argued that Tracy was attractive and that’s why the young man took the picture.

   At Margaret’s home Tracy found the deflated beach ball on the front lawn.  Something Tracy had not noticed before when she picked up Margaret, but now that she had been made aware…

   “I going talk to John.” Tracy announced. John was a policeman she dated once and still kept in touch with for advice and sometimes favours.

   Anxiety had left Margaret exhausted for the next few days. She mostly slept of them away. On the third day her doctor’s office called to remind her to get her bloodwork done and that made her force herself out of bed and try to move around again.

   She forced herself to go outside and try to tackle the leaves and overgrowth in the backyard. She armed herself with a rake.

   It wasn’t rocks this time, but pellets. Margaret heard the shots striking the house behind her. “You’re going to jail!” she yelled, unable to see any of them in the field. One pellet struck her arm and left a welt. She retreated inside.

   The next day she heard a car revving down the road. She went to the property edge to see. She tried to take a picture with her cell phone but only managed a smudgy video of her gravel drive. She was able to add the license number onto her fridge’s grocery list. Then it occurred to her to text the number to Tracy.

       A day later John, the policeman, arrived in plain clothes and van, and listened to Margaret. Maybe the license plate proved she wasn’t crazy. He had her show him the outside of the house. In the back flower boxes he found three pellets that had struck the house. Only they weren’t metal. “Rabbit feed. They’re rabbit pellets. They want to scare you, but they don’t want to hurt you.”

   Margaret walked him to his van and when he got in, she could see the deflated beach ball lying on his passenger seat. Tracy must have given it to John. Tracy believed her. “Let me make inquires and get back to you.” John offered, leaving his contact card.

   Margaret stayed in for the next four days, sleeping away as much of the fear as she could. Hearing from no one, until the doctor’s office called again. “You need to get your blood work done. Your doctor needs to know your current levels, and your insurance company is going to want an annual report soon.”     

   That tipped Margaret and she called John.

   A few inquiries, and days later, he drove her to A-Star Prime Investigations. A freelance business in a shabby plaza office with no reception or secretary, but four young men reluctant to step forward to greet Margaret.

   “I wanted to return this.” Margaret began, John passed her the deflated beach ball which she held out to the nearest young man.

   “I don’t know what that is.” Said the leading young man.

   “You need to take this, or I am going to take this to the police and file a formal complaint against your agency. You, and your friends, have been trying to get me to run and dance and play with a beach ball – and you took pictures of me out with my friend, so you can give them to my insurance company and say I’m not sick at all and they don’t have to pay me anymore, and you all get a big bonus from them.”

   The young man looked at John. “I don’t what she’s talking about.”

   Margaret charged on, “Does the insurance company know you throw rocks at people? Do they know you tried to run me off the road? You shot at me!” Margaret held out the deflated beach ball again. “You need to take this and never come near me again, or I’m giving it to the police as evidence and they’ll tell the insurance company and they’ll cut off your payments, not mine.”

   The other young men looked on their leader who caved and took the deflated beach ball.

   John reached in his pocket and handed Margaret something else.

   “Oh, yes.” She placed on the young man’s desk three rabbit pellets. “And these.”

   They left.

   Margaret’s medical condition wasn’t better for this, or worse, but her disability payments continued and her insurance company did not ask for an annual update from her for the next three years.