Imagine My Surprise! (36)
Epilogue and Afterward
36. Epilogue
So, let me tell you what happened after the mêlée.
After Poins smashed me, I blacked out and woke up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. There was an EMT lady with a round face that looked like my sister. She smiled.
“You’re okay. We’re just going to the hospital to make sure,” she said calmly.
“What…is Stoli okay?” That’s when I realized there was a bandage on my head and I was strapped onto a gurney in a moving ambulance, sirens blaring. There was a huge ache in my head.
“Stoli?” she asked. She looked up, then back down at me. She grinned. “You mean John? He’s okay. He’s right here.”
I lifted my head and saw Stoli sitting in a jump-seat not three feet from me. He had a massive wad of bandaging on his left hand and another bit wrapped around his right forearm. He also had a black eye. “Hey, Keenan. We did it.” He smiled.
I glanced at the lady, then at Stoli. “Finally. We did it.”
“Your parents are meeting us at Zuckerberg General.”
I put my head back and replied, “Zuckerberg. I’ll never get used to calling it that.”
Stoli said, “Your parents may not let us hang out any more.”
“Sure, they will. Just maybe no more baseball games.”
“Hallelujah.”
~~•~~
By the way, that big fight was two years ago. We moved to Los Gatos since then, just down the street from Campbell, so I can still hang out with my friend Ralphy. That’s how we have this cool attic. And I’m sorry to say that I haven’t recorded for a few weeks now. Hard to focus these days. Seems like forever ago that all that stuff at the Giants game went down. There’s a scar just above my hairline where Poindexter went at me. Franks’ murder and everything got Poins life in prison. No parole. Too many strikes against him already. Then Poins killed himself in lockup, maybe testing his theory about there being no death. I bet he woke up as a dung beetle.
Dolly didn’t spill nothing about reincarnation and dead drug dealers to the cops, just that Stoli and I had played a bad joke on the hosts and they got violent because they were under the influence of drugs and alcohol. She even sent a get-well card to the brewery, addressed to Stoli and I. That was the last we heard of her. I feel bad about her part in this. She didn’t deserve it. I’m thankful for her showing up, though — she helped solve the mystery of Who Killed Kurt Houston.
Bart is still disappeared.
Just so you know, the Eleventh Street Brewery is a success and the Harrises are financially secure for the first time ever.
I’ve checked up on my sister Shawnsee a few times. She lives in my old house and seems happy. I think she has a boyfriend. Also, she changed her name back to Houston, from her married name of Walker. I think about her every day … when I can remember, anyways.
As you can maybe tell, I’m not quite myself anymore, whatever that means. It all keeps slipping into a sort of, um, an, uh, the present, where all I can think of is lunch and video games and playing outside and my kickboxing team and my new little sister, Sabine.
Recently, I sat Stoli down and explained to him what I thought was happening to me and told him to not be upset. I also told him not to be sad and, in fact, to be happy that I was getting to be the kid I should be.
But he was sad. “I feel like I’m losing a best friend,” he said.
“I’m sorry. What you are really gaining is a full-time nephew. Please look after me and steer me straight.” Then I said, “Not too straight…that’d be boring.”
“I’ll try to keep you out of trouble.”
“Make sure I don’t grow up to be an asshole again.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Anyhow, I think I was brought back from the dead because Kurt Houston died at the wrong time. His death wasn’t part of the plan, so things had to be set right. I trip on how my story feels guided by an invisible hand, about how there is like a cosmic order to things. I think I glimpsed too much extra-dimensional connectedness or something, so now the old me is being phased out — or maybe I’m being phased in — into the life of an honest-to-goodness seven-year-old named Keenan Solomon Harris.
It hurts my head thinking all heavy and shit, so I think I’m going to call it a day and hide the recorder. Sorry, I don’t have more right now. I’m hungry and feel like catching up with Ralphy and Tina and the gang.
Untitled
[timestamp indicates 62 days after previous entry — final record]
Sorry I forgot about you! I caught a snake yesterday! Gopher snake, like so big. Me n Ralphy and they guys were playing patrol. So cool. Also, did I tell you I have a little sister now? I’ll try to remember to talk to you. You know.
Hey, someone is coming upstairs. I gotta go. Talk soon.
[end recording]
AFTERWARD
A short history of the Keenan Harris Tapes
In February of 2065, Professor F. C. Roberts of Stanford University contacted our publishing company with a curious discovery of 53 hours of digital audio recordings found in the attic of a home in Los Gatos, California. Dr. Roberts described the content of the recording as a reincarnation fantasy posing as a novel. He thought it probably more valuable as an anthropological oddity than literature.
Dr. Roberts was given the recordings by [identities withheld by request] who had just purchased the Los Gatos property in which the recordings were found. Those new owners somehow accessed this archaic Sony technology and, stunned by its contents, contacted Dr. Roberts for advice on how to handle the ‘Tapes’, as they termed the digital recordings. They have since been known as the “Keenan Harris Tapes” in academic circles.
The metadata on the audio files (in the now defunct mp3 format) is from the summer of 2029. The data has been confirmed as authentic, as was the recording device. The Sony DCM-A30 Portable Audio Recorder (no longer in production) on which the recording had been found was wrapped and rewrapped in plastic and duct tape with a note that said, “Please listen to my story.” This package was sealed in a plastic box wrapped, also in duct tape. It sat in a far recess of the attic under loose insulation for almost forty years before it was discovered.
When our team started investigating, it did not take long to find a man by the name of Keenan Solomon Harris. Dr. Harris is a psychologist practicing cognitive behavioral therapy in San Francisco. He remembers nothing of the recording and firmly believes the whole matter is a prank left behind by his late father, who was prone to such jokes. Even so, Harris has confirmed many of the names and relationships, including the late John Galvin (died 2040), his mother and father, Drew (died 2052) and Louise Harris (resides in Montara, CA), as well as Dr. Claveria (retired), and his childhood best friend, Ralph Malkmus. Dr. Harris also claims that he remembers little before age 7, at which time he received a head trauma that all but erased his memory before the incident, obliterating much of his childhood.
As for the identities surrounding the late author, K.S. Houston, all of these were confirmed as well, supporting the veracity of the story on the tapes. His sister, Shawnsee Houston, passed in 2043. Christopher Feist was indeed murdered in a liquor store. The gang identities: Franklin O’Donnell, Steven Hightower, Bart Montgomery, Dolores Velasquez and August Williams, have all been verified via city records. All are deceased.
Additionally, all the geographical locations are confirmed, from the addresses in Houston’s story, to the 7-Eleven of Harris’ story. The 11th Street Brewery has become something of a San Francisco destination.
In conclusion, the field of Transmigration Science has embraced the likelihood that the story as told by the Keenan Harris Tapes is factual. Not since the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson has the existence of transmigration been more confirmed. The search continues.
R. Adams, Ph.D.
Editor
