By Yaasha Moriah
Donny Chandler would never tell me what I needed to know. Which was why I needed to get the hiccups.
Great.
I slunk into Tornado Taco on the corner of Main Street and Bell Avenue. The last time I was here, I made a complete fool of myself. Not my fault, but still…
“Hey, Eric, buddy!” Stanley stood behind the counter, and by his overly-friendly grin, he remembered everything. “Feeling better these days?”
“I’m feeling fine,” I muttered under my breath as I approached the counter. “One Supernaturally Spicy, please.”
Stanley grimaced. “Dude, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. The last spicy thing you ate kind of, you know”—he lowered his voice to a whisper— “psyched you out.”
“I have meds now.” Technically speaking, that was true. I had meds. I just didn’t take them. Because I didn’t have schizophrenia. I had something a lot more… unusual.
“Well, if you’re sure.” Stanley shrugged.
As he entered my order into the computer, I scanned the customers and leaned against the counter. “Hey, have you seen Donny Chandler?”
Stanley’s smile evaporated. “That guy is a beast.”
“Jenny disappeared a week ago.”
“She’s probably on vacation.”
I shook my head. Jenny had confided in me months ago that she suspected her boss at the shipping company was involved in something shady. Now, she wasn’t answering her phone, and I was going out of my mind.
“Wait, you’re going to ask Donny about his sister?” Stanley lowered his voice. “Bro, do you want to get spread on the sidewalk like icing? He doesn’t like it when a guy even looks at Jenny.”
I said nothing. Oh, Donny would tell me. Even if he didn’t mean to.
A few minutes later, I exited Tornado Taco with a lead on Donny’s whereabouts and a taco so spicy it was already eating away its wrapper. Hiccups, here I come.
By the time I found Donny lounging with his thugs by the pawn shop, the first hiccups began to compress my chest. The fun was about to begin.
“Hey, Donny!” I called out as I approached. “I—hic!—have a question for you.”
Donny’s sneer flexed facial muscles I didn’t know people even had.
“You—hic!—have a question for me?” He mocked.
I straightened all five-and-a-half feet of me. “Donny, it’s a serious —hic!—question.”
His sneer widened. “I can tell.”
Almost there. Pressure built behind my eyes, and voices filtered into my mind. The first time this had happened, the cacophony had submerged me, every voice an incessant stream of consciousness.
I have to put together that report in the next hour or the boss will have my head! That was the sweating man in the suit-coat entering the office building across the street.
Do they see that my eyeliner is slightly longer on one side than the other? That was the teen girl entering Rad Fad with her peers.
Can’t wait to see what Donny does with this kid. That was one of Donny’s thugs.
Try telling your doctor sometime that you hear voices and see memories when you hiccup. Yeah, that didn’t turn out so well. But I knew what to do with my unexpected power now.
“So, Donny. I—hic!—need to—hic!—need to—hic!”
“You have something to say to me, worm?” Donny pulled himself up to his full height—which, considering that he’d been the size of a linebacker at thirteen, would have given me hiccups without the taco.
I puffed out my narrow chest. “Yeah—hic!—I do have something to—hic!—to—hic!—say. I want to know—hic!—what happened to—hic!—Jenny!”
Donny’s brows pulled downward for a moment, then he burst out laughing. His internal voice guffawed.
He wants to know about my sister? Scrawny, hiccupping dude’s got some grit, I’ll give him that. Ha! But Jenny ain’t his business.
I sensed an emotion underlying the voice—protectiveness. Interesting. I dug harder.
“I gotta know—hic!—if Jenny is—hic!—in—hic!—trouble.”
Trouble. Yeah, Jenny was in trouble. But not anymore.
Now images filtered into Donny’s thoughts, and I tried to freeze them for a moment.
Jenny, dark hair loose over her shoulders, speaking solemnly with two men in gray suits. Glancing over her shoulder at the viewer—at Donny—with eyes large with regret.
Donny’s voice speaking with unexpected tenderness. “I can’t protect you. Not like they can.”
Jenny’s sad smile. “I’ll be gone for a while, Donny. Who knows how long the trial will take?”
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
“I wish I’d never seen it.”
“Girl, you can put him behind bars for good. Do it.”
I miss her.
“Me too,” I agreed. Wait. Had I just said that out loud?
Donny’s eyes narrowed. “You too what?”
“I mean—hic!—I was just—hic!”
Donny moved closer, his fist tightening. I stepped backward instinctively.
“Uh, you know what? It—hic!—doesn’t matter anymore. Have a good—hic!—day!”
I turned tail and ran like we were in junior high again.
It wasn’t until I’d put about two blocks between me and Donny that I slowed down and pulled air into my burning lungs.
Jenny must have stumbled upon evidence of her boss’s illegal dealings. She probably hadn’t been able to tell me before going into witness protection, especially since our relationship was still a secret, but all of that didn’t matter now.
She was safe.
Donny and I had this in common, at least: I would also be here when she got back. And we would finally tell Donny we were dating.
In the meantime, my hiccups were winding down.
“Try drinking water through a paper towel!” an elderly woman called from one of the apartments above Delish Dish. “Or pinch your nose. Those hiccups can really throw you for a loop.”
I squinted up at her and laughed. “Thanks!”
She didn’t know the half of it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Crazy interesting premise.
Ha! You know, my baby brother hiccups all the time. I wonder what he’s thinking when he does…
That was a fun twist – and a most unusual superpower!
I mean, I don’t get the whole hot-food-makes-for-hiccups thing, but maybe that’s just me. ;)
Quite the enjoyable read!
I kinda wish I had that power, I mean, at least I would like my hiccups to do something other than just feel weird and make anything I say sound ridiculous!
It was a really fun story!
Really nice twist. I’ll be thinking about Eric’s super power the next time I’m overcome with hiccups.
That was great. I feel like if I had that power, I wouldn’t be able to focus enough on anyone’s thoughts!
Ohh I love this! (especially how we get to see a softer side to the tough bully character)