LITMIR.BIZ

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sweat-soaked face.

      “Damn it,” he said, then threw back the sheet and left the bed.

      The clock on the nightstand glowed the message that it was just after two in the morning. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Tux began to pace naked around the large bedroom.

      This was the third night in a row, he fumed. He’d been jolted awake, heart racing, dripping with sweat, three times now.

      The dreams he’d been having were not dreams... at least not in the usual sense of the word. That fact was what had him tied in knots and mad as hell.

      Tux sank onto the edge of the bed, rested his elbows on his knees and made a steeple of his fingers, tapping it against his lips.

      Slow down, calm down, he ordered himself. Ranting, raving and wearing out the carpet wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He had to analyze the situation and try to determine what in the hell was going on.

      Yes, okay, he had psychic powers that enabled him to glimpse events taking place anywhere in the world.

      But...and that was a very big but...the only way his psychic abilities could be put into operation was by him going into deep meditation, a near-trance, that left him drained and exhausted.

      He preferred not to use his detested powers, and rarely did so. He had, in fact, totally ignored them for many years.

      But now?

      “Damn it,” he said, shaking his head.

      He knew that the dreams he’d had for three nights now were not really products of his subconscious mind.

      They were not dreams.

      The images were psychic messages that had come to him unbidden.

      Why?

      Even more, how?

      He commanded his psychic powers. Outside forces did not dictate when his unwelcomed ability would be activated.

      Tux stretched out in the bed again, laced his hands beneath his head and glowered at the ceiling.

      He had two choices. He could ignore what was happening and hope it was a short-lived fluke and had run its course. Or he could square off against it, take a close mental look at the scenes that had come to him, and attempt to sift, sort, then dismiss them once and for all.

      “Yeah,” he said. “No contest. I’m the one who’s in charge here.”

      So, okay, he’d start at the beginning.

      The first night he’d seen a shadowy figure with no discernible features, or a clue as to whether it was a man or woman. Swirling around the figure was a dark maze of what appeared to be beads or balls of some sort.

      The second night the maze had been clearer. The dark cloud had become brightly colored beads, as well as buttons. The beads had separated into straight rows. The shadowy figure had been far from clear, but it was most definitely a woman.

      Then tonight there had been even more. He’d had a glimpse of a sign that read: Buttons and Beads.

      He’d also seen the woman. She had dark eyes and a wild tumble of black hair that fell to her shoulders in curly disarray. She was very lovely with a gypsylike appearance that was accentuated by a bright blue shawl she’d been wearing.

      She’d been holding out her hands, as though pleading for someone to come and help her, and tears had flowed down her pale cheeks.

      And on all three nights, he’d sensed the cold chill of danger.

      “Lord,” he said, and pulled his hands from beneath his head and dropped his arms heavily onto the bed.

      He needed a plan of action. The thought of enduring a fourth night like this held no appeal. Whatever was triggering his psychic powers had to be stopped before he went nuts.

      “Buttons and Beads.” He rolled onto his stomach, punched the pillow, then lowered his head again with a weary sigh.

      First thing in the morning, he thought, as sleep began to creep over his senses, he’d track down a place named Buttons and Beads. Even if it meant talking to every telephone information operator in the country, he’d find it.

      

      Nancy Shatner finished counting the glossy red beads, then scooped them into a plastic bag. She slipped the bag through a slot in a small white machine that sat on the table, heat sealing the bag.

      Next came a sticker with the name, address and telephone number of the shop, which she pressed into place in the lower right-hand corner of the bag.

      After checking off the red beads on an order form, she carried the rectangular hard-plastic bin to the front of the store and set it in its designated place, returning to the rear work area with a bin of blue beads.

      Settled once more at the table; she checked the order form, nodded, then lifted a handful of blue beads from the bin to a large felt mat. Using what was actually a frosting spatula, she began to quickly move beads two at a time from one side of the mat to the other.

      “Two, four, six, eight,” she said aloud, then continued to count silently.

      She made piles of twenty beads, which she would recount before sealing them into a bag.

      After making five piles of twenty, she took a sip of tea from a ceramic mug, wrinkling her nose as she discovered it was cold. Setting the mug to one side, she stretched her arms above her head, then dropped her hands to her lap, smiling as her gaze fell on the stack of orders she was filling.

      Business is booming, she thought. Her reputation for quick service and a product of superb quality was growing. Her mailorder catalog with colored photographs of the buttons and beads was worth the extra money she’d crossed her fingers and paid.

      Nancy switched her gaze to the far end of the large table where she was just beginning to start the assembly of a new catalog, which would have a special sale section to mark the celebration of Buttons and Beads being officially two years old.

      The walk-in trade, she mused, was increasing nicely, much to her surprised delight. The area of town where she was located wasn’t exactly a high-class shopping mecca. It wasn’t a high-class anything, for that matter.

      The decision to set up the front area attractively for whatever retail business she might garner had been a good one. It was easy enough to tote the bins to the rear area to fill mail orders, and she considered every face-to-face sale a bonus.

      “Life is a bowl of cherries,” she said, then laughed. “Or whatever. Get to work, Ms. Shatner.”

      Over the past two years, she’d perfected the knack of being able to count with one section of her brain, and think about whatever struck her fancy with the other part of her mind.

      A fact, she thought merrily, that had probably kept her from turning into a blithering idiot from spending her days counting two, four, six...

      Life is a bowl of cherries? she mentally repeated, as she slid blue beads from one side of the mat to the other. Now that she really thought about it, that didn’t make much sense. What if a person didn’t like cherries?

      The bottom line was that her life was in shipshape order. She was happy, fulfilled and contented. Her fledgling business was doing well, and she had marvelous friends in the store’s shabby, run-down neighborhood. She had everything she wanted and needed.

      Well...

      Nancy frowned slightly as she continued to count the beads.

      There were moments...not often, but once in a while... when she was a tad lonely. Sitting alone in her little apartment above the store, watching a romantic movie on her minuscule television, sometimes caused her to wistfully yearn for a special man, a wonderful man, to take her into his arms.

      “Hush, Nancy,” she said. “Eighteen, twenty,” she added, completing a pile of beads.

      She stared into space.

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