T H Y N G E S   T H A T   D R I V E   M E N   M A D
                                
     He had the eyes of a jackal the last time I saw him, great widened fearing eyes like two marble
  eggs shot through. "Christ, Leo," I muttered after he wandered about the cafe with a vaguely haunted
  look and settled at last into the opposite end of my booth. I stared at him from across the tiny table.
  "What's into you?"
     Leonard slouched against the corner, eyes gazing out the window sporadically, searching the
  sky as if for some catastrophe he hoped to avoid. He ran a shaking hand through his long grey-touched
  hair, and I ordered a coffee to calm him down. He sipped the hot liquid gratefully when it came, his
  shoulders hunched as if anticipating a rain of blows. "It's bad," he said finally, not looking up from the
  table.
     "How bad?" This was getting old, and fast; I'd never had much of taste for melodrama,
  on-screen or off. Out of habit I looked outside in case anyone had been following him.
     "They're following me."
     I looked harder. No one out of the ordinary, ergo a lot of suspicious-looking individuals pacing
  about. None of them looked government, though, and no one else was subtle enough not to have shot up
  the whole cafe by now. I relaxed as much as was possible considering the waves of fear emanating from
  the withdrawn man across the table.
     I remained silent for awhile but Leonard didn't seem inclined to talk. With a sigh I closed the
  tech book that I was trying to cram between my ears in the few hours before my night class. "Who," I
  began, then more to the point: "What's bitin' you, man? You score some of that cheap crap again?"
     Leonard shook his head spastically, a nervous smile creeping across his lips. "Nothing like
  that," he vowed, a slight tremor plaguing his voice. "I only wish..." He stopped abruptly, eyes darting
  briefly to the left, then leaned forward intently, elbows on the edge of the table as his hand spread open
  candidly. "Look," he began hesitantly, his voice growing more and more steady as if he was building up
  steam. "Here's how it is."
     Then he told me.
  
     "What would you say," he began, "If I told you that I knew what was really going on?"
     I gave a brief moment over to consideration. "Do you mean what's really going on, or What's
  Really Going On?"
     "What's Really Going On", he affirmed.
     "Wow," I replied. Then: "Mmmm." He opened his mouth to speak again when the waitress
  appeared.
     "Would you like more coffee?" she asked, the steaming pot in her hand. I accepted.
     Leonard looked at her intently. "No thanks," he replied, glancing at her as she continued on her
  rounds. "I'm talking about Reality here, not politics or economics or the various class struggles we
  divert ourselves with." His eyes lifted slightly as he framed what he was trying to say. "Those are all
  fabrications. Human fabrications, to be sure, but fabrications nonetheless. The key here is to look
  beyond the patterns we have created, the modes of behavior we have conditioned ourselves to adopt, yet
  which we call human nature...beyond these, and all of the cycles and philosophies and discoveries that
  we produce to-" he was cut off by the cafe intercom.
     "Leonard Heisman, paging Leonard Heisman, you have a telephone call at the cash register,"
  the ceiling speakers brayed.
     He ignored them, as well as my expression. I was about to prod him on his refusal to accept
  the call when he continued.
     "That we use to divert ourselves from Reality. The fact is, What's Really Going On is pretty
  damn scary. Everything you take for granted: thought, action, free will, fate, coincidence--especially
  coincidence-" A string of three police cars raced by the cafe, their piercing sirens drowning out his next
  few words.
     Leonard stopped, smiled wryly. "Alright, I'll cut it down to the basics. I looked past the
  illusions and comforts that society has built itself on; I tried to find out where we as a race actually fit
  into things. There's a whole spectrum of beings out there of which we have no knowledge, of whom--or
  to whom--we are but a form of art, if you get my drift. Creations, entertainments, expressions, anything
  but the beloved creatures that religion has us believe we are. They-"
     "Can I refill your water?" The waitress again.
     Leonard looked exasperated. "I guess I won't be able to tell you this," he muttered as I slid my
  glass over to the waitress. I was still waiting for him to stop being so damn cryptic. He fished a hand
  inside his jacket, pulled out an envelope, placed it in my hand. "Here."
     The waitress gave a stifled grunt as someone jostled her, and the water pitcher slipped from her
  grasp to clatter to the table, submerging my hand, my textbook, and the envelope in a rapidly spreading
  pool of water. "I'm so sorry," she gasped, using her apron to make a token effort at drying my things.
  "I'll be right back with some towels."
     Leonard stood with an expression I could not fathom. "They may control timing," he stated in a
  serious voice while holding my gaze. "But they cannot read minds." He patted my shoulder, then turned
  and walked out of the cafe, passing the waitress on her way back with an armload of towels. As she
  was cleaning up the mess I saw a flash of color as a driver lost it and plowed into three parked cars,
  forcing them over the sidewalk and into the side of the cafe. The panic that ensued left me with three
  things: the note that Leonard had slipped into my jacket pocket, the knowledge that he had been struck
  by two of the three cars upon leaving the cafe, and an acute sense of paranoia.
  
     I waited until I was safe behind the locked doors of my apartment before addressing myself to
  Leonard's note--in effect, his last words. The first sentence went through three changes of color as first a
  black pen, then a blue and finally a red one each ran out of ink. The note continued in pencil, and went
  as follows:
  
     "I suppose by the fact that you're reading this that I have outwitted them, and that both you and
  this note have avoided destruction, even if I have not. I want you to read what I have to say with an
  open mind; it may seem extravagant conjecture, the result perhaps of delving into hermetic and occult
  philosophy, but I assure you that proof shall follow.
     "There are Things out there of which man has no conception, invisible and formless beings to
  whom nature's laws are but whims and hobbies. You may have learned through quantum physics that
  existence as we know it, in fact the entire universe, is the result of a random fluctuation in the void, and
  that all of our world is composed of similar fluctuations in the energy-states that themselves compose
  the universe. It thus follows that everything we know and experience, everything from the sparking of
  neurons and the change of weather to the creation of life and the birth of stars, is the result of
  coincidence.
     "These beings--these Intelligences--control coincidence. They are not responsible for actual
  processes or actions, but rather in what order--and at what time--these processes and actions take place.
  By way of illustration, they cannot destroy or stop your car in and of themselves, but they can arrange
  for a vehicle to lose control just as you are in its path, or for each traffic light to turn red upon your
  approach, or cause such traffic that you are delayed from your destination by a matter of hours. They
  could not kill you directly, but they could arrange for the drive-by shooting to occur when you are
  standing next to its target, rather than when you are a block away. Am I making myself clear? The
  beings control the timing of events, and they don't want us to know this. 
     "Why? Because if we are aware of their power over us, we can arrange things so that there is
  no room for coincidence--i.e., we can render them powerless. We are more than their entertainment, we
  are their tools and pawns; they use us, by our praise of luck or fate or spirits or gods, to compete with
  each other in their twisted ethereal society. And they don't want us to spoil their game.
     "I don't know what else to add, save that I must get this to someone before it and I cease to be.
  Think of what I have written, and keep an eye out."
  
     By the time I had finished reading I was convinced, more by the circumstances than by
  Leonard's words. After reading the first paragraph, the bulb in my lamp burned out. So did the three I
  replaced it with. I tried using a flashlight, but the batteries died almost instantly. I ended up reading by
  the waning light of three candles, and even then the phone rang four times, and my doorbell rang
  twice.I answered none of these.
     My first reaction was to call Professor Morrow at the university, a philosophy instructor with
  whom Leonard and I had often discussed matters both abstract and arcane. The phone rang twice.
     "Morrow here." He was still at the University, apparently.
     "Hey Hank," I greeted.
     "Don," he recognized, and I could picture his habitual smile
  of greeting. "What's going on?"
     "I assume you've heard about Leonard?"
     He sighed into the phone. "God, yes. Where you there?"
     "Uh-huh. In fact, that's kind of why I called. Have you received any calls or letters from him in
  the past few weeks, anything that would give you some idea what he was working on?"
     "What do you mean?" I knew immediately that he hadn't.
     "Well, I've got this note here, and it's...you still there?" I found out later that a drunk driver had
  hit a phoneline at precisely that instant, though the news was of course not entirely reassuring. Why no,
  Mr. Carroll, noone cut your phone lines, it was just a freak accident, a coincidence....
     Just a coincidence, I told myself. Then it struck me just how many possible coincidences there
  were. Phone calls. Traffic. Mechanical failures. Earthquakes. Plane wrecks. Pieces of Skylab...
     I went to the fridge, got a beer, slammed the door shut with my elbow. I cursed as all of my
  magnets fell to the floor. Then I cursed again as I read what the alphabet ones spelled out.
     W  E  '  R  E     W  A  T  C  H  I  N  G     Y  O  U
                                
     Just a coincidence. Nevertheless, I decided to leave the house, and the idea of visiting Morrow
  at his office had appeal. By some miracle--or perhaps, some oversight--my car battery wasn't dead, and
  I headed out on the road driving with more care than on the day I got my license. Still, I wasn't fully
  surprised when the blue and red lights flashed on behind me.
     This was no ordinary traffic violation. After frisking and cuffing me, then searching my car, the
  cop informed me that I and my car matched the description of a guy who had robbed two pizza joints
  this evening. He finally let me go after a witness realized I wasn't the man who had shoved a gun in his
  face, and I proceeded to hit every red light until I got on the freeway. Two accidents kept me in
  parking-lot traffic until it was by far time for Morrow to have gone home from the University. While I
  was waiting for Rod Serling to make an appearance, I ran out of gas. That was about the time I gave up
  on reaching the Professor.
  
     I don't know what else I can do. I may go any day now. The only solution I've come up with is
  to type this up, a record of the whole incident, and make enough copies to mail and fax to every
  publisher, mystic, writer, skeptic, and college I can think of. Call it satire, call it fiction, call it anything
  to get it published. Maybe send it out under a number of psuedonyms, names of other authors. If I'm
  lucky I'll be able to post this on the Net, but I doubt anything as temperamental as a computer would do
  me any good. But maybe, with enough attempts and a little--am I so naive as to say it--luck, just maybe
  one copy of this manuscript will slip by the All-Seeing Eyes and make it to print, in some journal or
  'zine or anthology or something. Maybe.