I was having a bad dream and I woke up to a worse reality. In the dream I kept asking girls out, who would willingly oblige, only to leave me the minute I got them wherever we were going for the first guy they saw. It was depressing. I was thinking of myself (in the dream) as the facilitator of the world, getting every guy laid but me. Then I woke up and things got worse. Well, if you looked at it from the right angle.

There was a big blonde circus-freak guy shaking my bed, trying to wake me up. There were more circus freaks behind him. They looked pissed and German. It was probably the blonde crew cuts and the bulging biceps. Maybe they were Russian. But then the little guy (obviously the leader, big guys learn how to pound people, the little guys learn how to make big guys pound other people) started yelling at the guy shaking my bed, calling him Hans and telling him to stop screwing around and just pick me up. When I opened my eyes Hans pointed a gun at me and said, in a thick accent that might have been Austrian, “Are you da one dey call Jumper?”

Now I felt like I was in a B-grade action movie. Yeah, you morons broke in grabbed my bed and shook me to consciousness because you weren’t sure who I was. Right.

The little guy said, “It’s him. Get him up.” Little guys, always the smart ones.

“Can I grab some clothes?” I asked, not really acting surprised or upset that I was apparently being kidnapped. I figured I’d play it cool. One of the other mountains of intelligence threw a bundle of clothes at me that he’d pulled out of my dresser. So much for being cool. I slipped the shirt and shorts on and grabbed my shoes from the floor as they hustled me out of my bedroom.

The living room didn’t look trashed so I figured they hadn’t been here long, or just knew where I was. I wondered if my roommates were home and then figured they probably weren’t. Matt worked overnight and spent days at his girlfriends, and Pharaoh almost never came home before noon, even though he got off work at midnight. No telling where he spent his free time.

The cat sat up on the chair and stretched, not at all concerned about my predicament. Thanks cat, real fuckin’ helpful.

They shuffled me outside and I was amazed at their audacity. Here they were, three mongoloid Europeans and a little swarthy guy in a suit leading me out to a black sedan (these guys had been watching too many movies) in full view of the entire neighborhood, and they didn’t seem to think that was suspicious. Unfortunately, none of my neighbors seemed to be available. Probably all at work, the bastards.

The interior of the car was brand new and smelled of that wonderful new car odor. I was shoved into the back seat between two of the hulk’s, and the third hulk drove. Little guy sat in the front passenger seat ignoring me. No one spoke for most of the drive, and when we took a left out of my neighborhood I had a pretty good idea where we were going.

Titan was an old bomb factory from World War II that had been abandoned for at least 20 years. It was mostly hollowed out office spaces and big fat warehouses, but it seemed like the perfect place for these guys to use as a base of operations. I wondered who they worked for, and was idly curious about what they wanted with me. Nobody seemed interested in asking me any questions though, so I just rode along.

When we finally stopped and started making our way into the building Little Guy pulled a pistol from his jacket and waved for me to go in first. I stepped in front of him and he cracked the pistol on the back of my head. Had this really been a movie I would have passed out in a heap, and I wondered if that’s what he expected. Instead I just dropped to one knee and watched little red balls explode in my eyelids. It occurred to me that if they’d wanted to knock me out they could have saved themselves the trouble since I was sleeping when they found me. Maybe they just though I’d enjoy the drive.

“Tie him up.” Little Guy muttered.

My hands were yanked behind my back and I felt thick scratchy hemp ropes being nestled around my wrists. They didn’t hurt so much as itch. My forehead was throbbing by the time they lifted me off my feet and carried me into the building. I decided to conserve my energy since they were nice enough to carry me.

A short ride up a freight elevator later and we were inside an old office. Walls and cubicles were scattered about haphazardly, and a big open area, including several missing windows that let air flow freely through the building appeared to be our final destination. They sat me in a chair and Hans tied me to it. Little Guy walked over to a desk that was littered with metal pokey things that I recognized as the kinds of things torturers would use in bad movies.

“Do you know what these are?” Little Guy asked, picking up what looked like a hand held pneumatic cuisinart.

I shook my head. I didn’t think I could talk just yet, and I could taste copper in my mouth. I was momentarily alarmed that my brain was bleeding into my nasal cavities, and then realized it didn’t make much difference anyway. Unless these guys were terminally stupid they were going to kill me. But first, I suspected they were going to ask some questions.

One of the other linebackers picked up a metal wastebasket and sat it on the desk. He took out a match and dropped it into the trash can and was instantly rewarded with a fiery blaze. Little Guy held his wicked implement of torture over the fire until it blackened. I assume he was waiting for it to turn red and then white, but that kind of thing rarely happens in reality. Unless he wanted to melt the thing to his hand.

“You will tell us now, I think, about the book.” Little Guy said with theatrical precision. That’s it dude, be vague.

“Do you know why they call me Jumper?” I asked.

“It’s not your real name, I know.” Little Guy said, “Just your codename.”

Like I was in a secret club or something. Well, I guessed it was time to show them why.

I’m not sure how or why I can do it, I just can. I was born with the ability. When I was little I used to do it to cats and dogs, and then later I figured out that I could do it to people too. With a little practice, and a little training from the guys in my secret club I got really good at it. And I was about to show them how simple it was.

I caught Hans eye. He and I stared at each other for maybe a second while Little Guy started to step around the desk. And then I was Hans. It’s really that simple. I just need to make eye contact. I pushed his consciousness to the back of his mind and I took over. It’s kind of like driving a car, they’re all pretty much the same, you just have to know how to steer. My body, which I could now see through Hans’s eyes, went limp. Little Guy started towards me and I grabbed him by the back of the neck. Damn Hans was strong! I lifted him off his feet and tossed him aside.

The brothers Grimm looked at me with confused expressions and I belted one of them in the face. The other pulled a knife and stabbed me in the back. This is the great part of jumping. I can’t feel the pain, just the actual pressure of the knife sliding into Hans’s flesh. I turned and grabbed him by the head, and damn did he look surprised. I twisted hard and heard a satisfying snap, like thumping a straw filled with air. He dropped limp to the ground. I pulled the knife from my back and slit the other guys throat as he tried to stand. Then I heard the gunshot. I didn’t want to take any chances, if I’m still in a body when it dies I have no idea what happens, but jumping back to my body doesn’t even require eye contact, it just requires me to stop concentrating.

I looked up and watched Hans drop to the floor. Little guy shot him twice more for good measure and then looked helplessly around.

“You guys suck.” I said, and then I jumped into Little Guy. This part was kind of cruel, but I didn’t have a whole lot of choices at the moment. I ran little guys body to the edge of the building and leaped hard. As soon as his feet left the ground I slipped back into my body quick enough to watch his head disappear from sight. I heard him hit the car downstairs. Pretty sure he was dead, or at least very incapacitated. I smiled.

Then I realized how stupid I can be sometimes. I really should have untied myself while I was in one of their bodies.

It took me about ten minutes to finally break the stupid chair. When I got to the point where I could slide my still tied hands under my legs and get them in front of me I grabbed the still bloody knife from Hans’s hands and cut myself loose.

Downstairs I found Little Guy. He was pretty dead. Looked like he’d landed on the back right fender pretty hard. Hard enough to dent the shit out of it. But he didn’t do enough damage to keep me from driving off in their nice new car. I rifled his pockets until I found the keys. I slipped them out and pulled his gloves off his hands. They were a little tight, but I wasn’t particularly interested in leaving fingerprints anywhere.

Then I had a pleasant little drive. I didn’t go home, not yet. No sense being spotted in the neighborhood in a car belonging to four dead guys. I drove out to a gas station just off the highway and called Pharaoh. Twenty minutes later he picked me up and we went to lunch.

“So you just left them there?”

“Yeah, what else was I going to do?”

“I don’t know.” I’d told Pharaoh all about my morning over lunch, and now he was full of questions.

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. Let the cops figure it out.”

“Did you leave any fingerprints behind.”
I thought about that. I wasn’t sure whether I’d left fingerprints on the chair or anyplace else in the factory. I wasn’t particularly worried about it at the moment. If the cops came and asked questions I figured I’d come up with something. I should have thought about it more.

Pharaoh was an artist, and he’d gotten his nickname from the Egyptian style paintings he did. Everyone I knew called him Pharaoh, and I sometimes wondered how many people knew his real name. He shared the house with me and Matt Montrose who everyone called Monster. Monster had mental abilities like I did, but of a different sort. Basically he was immune to telepathic attacks, like the jumps that I was able to do. I’d never been able to jump into Monster’s mind. He had no offensive mental capabilities himself, but he was in excellent physical condition and could fire a gun like a pro. He’d been trained by my secret club as well, though in different capacities. He and I were a team.

Pharaoh didn’t have any mental powers, and wasn’t really a part of the government agency I worked for, but he was considered a friend of the club, and had actually done some work for us in the past, reconstructing famous paintings and forging some to help bust a smuggling ring. All in all our lives were damn near exciting enough to write a book about. Yeah.

We stopped at a gas station on the way back to the house and I spotted Monster just as he was coming out of the convenience store with a huge bottle of coke that looked like a small MX missile.

“Hey!” He shouted and jogged over to Pharaoh’s car.

“Monster. What’s shaking?” Pharaoh asked.

“We’re supposed to be working.” He said to me.

“What?” I asked.

“Tailing that dude from Virginia. We’re supposed to pick him up in half an hour, relieve the team on duty now. CIA I think is watching him until two, and then he’s hours until midnight.”

“Damn.” I said, and meant it. I’d forgotten completely about it. It pushed the whole sordid ordeal of morning out of my mind. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah. Come on, I got food already, and cokes.”
Pharaoh waved and we drove off towards a random suburban neighborhood to start tailing bad guys. My exciting life.

The moron we were supposed to be tailing was a suspected front man for a black ops terrorist group. He wasn’t an actual terrorist himself, but the kind of guy who made the arrangements for them to sneak into the country, get food, weapons, and lunchboxes and helped clean up the messes they made. Guys like this were a dime a dozen, but when a terrorist group found a really good one they hung onto him like a lucky penny.

“Albert D. Starks. Sounds like an accountant.” Monster said looking out the window and waving to the CIA guys as we drove by them. I recognized Tony Castro sitting in the driver’s seat. I vaguely recalled having seen the red head in the seat next to him somewhere before, but couldn’t remember his name. They were wearing black suits and shades. Monster and I were wearing shorts and tee shirts with tennis shoes. Gotta love CIA guys. They waved and drove up to the car as we parked on the curb. The passenger window rolled down and I suddenly remembered the redheads name was Gisbon.

“Afternoon ladies.” CIA guys always said that kind of thing. They thought it was funny. “He’s still in the house. Hasn’t come out for anything since this morning when he got the paper and smoked a joint on the front porch.”

“That’s awfully bold of him.” Monster said.

“You guys didn’t arrest him for smoking a joint in a public neighborhood?” I asked sarcastically. They ignored me. Good for them.

“Here’s his file. Read it, learn it, live it, love it.” And they drove off. Monster handed me the thick manila folder and we watched them drive away.

“They’re so cute when they’re that age.” Monster said and I laughed out loud.

The folder was full of pictures. The kind of stuff you’d see in a bad movie, the government actually bothers to take pictures like that. At least two dozen of them. The guy at a coffee shop buying cigarettes. The guy at a restaurant eating at an outside table. Close ups of his face. Distance shots of him getting in and out of cars, walking in and out of warehouses, and generally just milling about in parks. I’m always amazed at these things. I stopped on one that had him sitting on a park bench looking to his left with a newspaper in his hand and a cup of coffee sitting next to him.

“Check out the babe jogging by in this one.” I said handing it to Monster.

“Looks like he’s checking her out too.”

“How could he not be. Man if I had legs like that…”

“You’d be a chick.” Monster finished for me.

“Yeah, but I’d be a happy chick.”

House watching is fascinatingly dull work. It’s in fact so dull that it’s almost like buying insurance for every single item you own. Or ever intend to own. Or have even thought about owning.

We went into the bar low and fast, avoiding the dancing girls in spandex, and the guys chugging beer trying to impress them. I could feel the two cops behind me, breathing down my neck, making sure I didn’t make any mistakes. Morons. Why the hell did they bring me here? They wanted Manny, but I wasn’t about to give him up to them. They had no idea what they were looking for, which I guess was there excuse for bringing me in, but how the hell could they trust me? I certainly wouldn’t have trusted them.

I saw Manny where I expected to, behind the bar. He was wiping out a beer glass and smiling at a pretty blonde who was stuffing a dollar in his tip jar. He made eye contact with me, and for a second I panicked. I could see the smile playing around the corners of his mouth, and I tensed. We hadn’t seen each other for almost two years, and now he was ready for the jubilant reunion. I had to nix it quick. I squinted my eyes, angry like, and shook my head as imperceptibly as possible. Just like that, and I win.

The smile disappeared and he walked over to us, he’d already turned this direction when he saw me, and now he was following through on the beginning of the play. Give him one thing; Manny knew how to keep people from being suspicious. I didn’t have as much practice as he did, but I was about to do some quick on my feet work.

“Hey.” He said, barely over the din of the music. “What can I get ya?”

“We’re looking for a guy.” I said, “Manuel Gibson. Used to hang out here.”

Now he was looking at me confused, like he didn’t know if I was joking or not. I dove in hard to keep him from dropping dime on himself.

“He’s about six-one.” I lied. If they’d read and memorized the file they probably would have snagged me right then. Here I am standing in front of Manuel Gibson, who’s five eight on a good day, and asking about Manuel Gibson who’s six foot one. The cops stayed quiet though, standing behind me like a wall, keeping me from getting out of here until I’d done what they wanted.

“He has long dark hair he keeps tied in a ponytail,” I never would have gotten away with this if the dumb ass cops hadn’t told me they didn’t have a picture to go on, just a description, “And a trim mustache and goatee.” Manny shook his short haired, clean shaven head.

“Heard of him?” I asked.

“Maybe.” He said, non-commitally.

“Well, if he does come by, have him give me a call.” I handed a business card across the bar and set it tightly in Manny’s hand. This was the calculated part. The part that was risky, but I felt like I had these cops outsmarted from the word go. They didn’t disappoint.

“Let me see that.” The one in the brown suit said. He ripped the card from Manny’s hand and examined it like it was a murder weapon. Clean, front and back, just my phone number and name. Just the way I’d planned it. Dumb cop number two gave his partner a hard look and then they both looked back and forth between me and Manny.

“Let’s go.” Number two said. I timed this part, and am particularly proud of how well it came off. They both turned around simultaneously, just for a split second, leaving me and Manny at the bar with both of them looking the other way. I didn’t have time to actually hand him anything else, but a ball of wadded up paper with a note I’d hand written him came out of my front pocket. As I turned to follow the cops out the door I pitched it, behind my back, over the counter, and into Manny’s waiting hands. He dropped it beneath the bar without looking at it and watched us as we left.