THE CRIMSON WIZARD

THE CRIMSON WIZARD Episode #1

SUDDENLY

Doug finally got it. It had always been the same reoccurring message. One principle being served up and delivered to him in a myriad of ways.

There was the time he was driving his two-and-a-half-ton delivery truck down county road 39 in Plant City, Fla. He was working for one of Tampa’s major distributors. He had just left one customer establishment and was headed for the next stop on his beverage route. The sun was shining with not a rain cloud in sight. Indeed, it was a perfect Florida day. The whole morning could not have been nicer. A gentle breeze carried the perfume mixture of wildflowers and grazing cattle in through the side window of his truck. One more stop and he could head his road warrior diesel back to the barn, for this night held lofty expectations. It would be his third date with Emily, and he knew what that meant.

As he daydreamed on with visions of sugar plums dancing in his head suddenly, he spied a figure behind the short, barbed wire fence that strung for miles on his left. It was that of a man kneeling beside a pond. He appeared to be washing his face. Doug paid him no mind—then he suddenly he realized. “Hey were miles from nowhere, and there is no horse or vehicle near him. Maybe he’s in trouble?” Doug slowed his truck to carefully assess the situation. Truckers have always been well known for helping people in distress on the highway.

The man rose having washed his face and wiped it with a large cuff that hung down from his crimson red magnificent looking robe, his eyes were shining, Doug’s eyes squinted from the glow from the stranger’s eyes. He wandered was the shining light coming from the sun’s reflection on the waters of the pond. Still, they held a certain mystery he should not have been able to read such detail from such a distance. Doug raised his hand to block the piercing light and get a better look. With the slightest smile Doug was reassured by the wayfarer that he was in no dire need.

Doug waved and proceeded on to his next destination. This is where the situation took on a mysterious overture.

He pulled into the parking lot of his next and last customer for the day, and there already parked by the curve with the hood up was a car that seemed to be having a problem.

He grabbed his trusty route book and proceeded on his way into the store. Passing by the disabled car he spied a young woman under the hood of the vehicle. She was trying to connect the battery cables to the terminals. Being a gentleman at heart, and it being such a lovely day—and him so far ahead of his schedule. Doug decided to stop and offer the damsel in distress some help. “Can I help you Ma’am?”

I suppose for her own reasons, and he really did not know why, she abruptly snapped back at him. Her head twisting around like a Halloween pumpkin teetering on a broom-stick- handle. “Why? You chauvinist pig, don’t you think a woman can do at least as good a job as a man?” It was obvious that the lady was a distinctively liberated woman and did not want the assistance of a man. Not that it mattered to Doug but obviously it did matter very much to her.

He lost his footing as the woman viciously reprimanded him. Meekly he turned his body towards the entrance of the store and unpretentiously strolled in. His entire day had just been dashed to smithereens in one foul swoop. Dejected he walked in by the cashiers never saying a word of greeting which was not like Doug at all. to the back of the store, he trumped and to the coolers where he displayed his wares but this time it was to hide, and to lick his wounds from the tongue lashing he had just received outside.

Suddenly, and just before Doug could kick the swinging doors open that would lead him to the sanctuary of the coolers there was an explosion out front of the store that rocked the entire building. Someone yelled, “call 911.” The managing clerk yelled. “Everybody out of the store, and please be calm until we find out what the crash was all about. Everyone was amazed, there laying in a heap, on the ground, was the lady from under the hood of the car. The battery had exploded in her face. Later Doug learned that she had been permanently blinded by the corrosive battery acid. He reasoned— “it might very well have been me”—had she allowed his assistance.

Offering what little help he could while waiting for the paramedics; the vision of the strange man in the crimson cloak that he had encountered washing his face by the still waters of the pond came slowly cyphering back into his head. In the recesses of his mind Doug knew and he exclaimed,” in some unfathomable way the stranger knew what was about to happen, he was washing the battery acid from my face. But how could that be?” Had he accidently encountered a wizard of the woods?

In some illogical unworldly way, the wayfarer Wizard—if in fact he was a Wizard had hardened the woman’s heart long before Doug had even encountered the situation.

Coupled with a mystery that had happened to him in the past, and one that would happen to him in the future, Doug has concluded that, NO WAIT! I will save that tidbit for the next episode.

TA-TA… Lad