90_Minutes_to_Live (12 page)

“Anything else you want to tell us?”

“About what?” I asked, the perfect angel, the lid on the cookie jar and the crumbs on my chin apparently invisible. The older cop pursed his lips again and paused. Then he stuck out his hand.

“We appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Reynolds.” I shook his outstretched hand and then followed them back to the front door.

“Have a nice day sir,” the younger cop said on his way out, placing his bus driver hat back on his head.

“You too, guys,” I said, then pointlessly added “Good luck.” And they were gone. I stood in the foyer for a while, unsure what else to do, then felt an uncontrollable urge to get out of the house. I grabbed my wallet and cell phone and headed out the back door for the beach, still barefoot and in my gym clothes.

I walked for a long time, lost in thought. The morning became a bit more unrealistic to me and it felt good actually. My mind rationalized the night away, insulating itself from my fear and guilt. So I had written a bad story in some kind of drunken stupor about Chad’s death and now he was dead. Disturbing, of course, but hardly evidence some evil force had moved into my bedroom or a powerful murderous creature controlled my computer. My feelings in the morning were doubtlessly leftover fear from my terrible nightmare, a remnant of the horror that it had created. As I said, I never really had any nightmares before this, so how in the hell would I know how it left you. Less drinking and more working and I would be fine.

I ended up at a little outdoor bar and grill I went to sometimes and realized I was starving. I sat under a little umbrella at a plastic table, had a great blackened-grouper sandwich with fries and chased it down with a cold beer. By the time I got home it was mid-afternoon and I was actually thinking about my next writing project, which had gotten off to a rocky start. I had some ideas about how to fix it and figured sitting at my desk, tapping out some real work might erase what was left of my fear. Maybe it would make me feel more normal again.

Feeling a twinge of anxiety I headed up the stairs, momentarily considering sitting on the couch to watch a little TV but forced myself to climb anyway. My bedroom looked completely normal, no bloodthirsty creatures in my closet when I pulled out some clean jeans and a shirt. I actually laughed at myself a bit. I took a long hot shower, put on my clean clothes and walked into my office.

The computer sat on my desk, the screen dark, normal. I sat down, tried to turn it on and was momentarily confused when nothing happened. Then I remembered I had unplugged it. I popped the cord back into the wall, pushed the power button and sat patiently through the start-up. I stared a moment at my normal appearing task bar. Before opening my word program, I clicked my trash bin, clicked on
empty trash
and watched the files disappear.

The end.

It seems funny to me now but I felt very normal, despite the fact my ex-wife was just across the bridge, mourning the horrible and bloody death of her boyfriend. I am sure I didn’t think about her or Chad at all the rest of the day. I’m not sure that’s normal but it’s the truth. I opened up my project file and in a very short time I was lost in my work, tapping away, writing out new ideas as I always did. As usual, the one hour turned out to be more like three hours and when I stretched out the ache in my back from hunching over my key board, the sky outside my office window was a reddish orange. The wall clock, a neon job with martini glasses for hands, said it was nearly seven-thirty. I saved my work in my
new stories
file and then watched the floating book cover screen-saver pop on. Everything felt normal and I sighed, content.

I wasn’t really hungry but walked a block down the road to a little pizza joint I like, got a white pizza with chicken and artichokes to go and carried it home. I was feeling pretty pleased. Under the circumstances,
that
may not be normal, no matter how satisfied I felt.

When I got home there were a few messages on my machine but I chose not to listen to them (why ruin my good mood?). I grabbed a Heineken from the ‘fridge and poured it into a frosted pilsner mug from the freezer. I joined my pizza in the living room and sat on the couch to flip through the TV channels while I ate.

I found a favorite movie on the Sci-Fi channel (
Blade Runner
, with a very young Harrison Ford) and settled into my mindless evening. I fell asleep on the couch about half way through a re-run of the
Dennis Miller Live
show on HBO. Half a pizza was hardening in the box on my coffee table and the other half a bowling ball in my stomach.

Then another dream came. At least if felt like a dream, even as it happened. I woke up on the couch with the TV still on. I can’t really explain the feeling (a real weakness for a writer I admit but hey I’m no T.H. Lawrence) but it was rather surreal. Dreamlike, which I know is a cop-out.

I remember comforting myself with the knowledge that it wasn’t real. The pull I felt was like a calling, for lack of a better term. I want you to understand, I had a deep need to go upstairs. I didn’t decide to go, just knew there was no choice; I had to go and did. The house was dark and I went slowly, frightened, but in the way you get scared watching a slasher movie. It is an exhilarating fear. Exciting because it’s fun to be scared (thank God or I would have to get a real job), as long as you are secure in knowledge it is make believe, just a thrill ride. That was how I felt.

My office was lit by the soft glow of my computer screen, a soft white luminescent aura. The word program was open, the page blank and the little rectangle blinked in the upper left corner, softly calling to me. It wasn’t an invitation, more of a demand.

Feed me Seymour, feed me!

I sat down in my chair and placed my hands on the keyboard. The rectangle still blinked, faster it seemed; it was no longer black but a crimson red.

Now!
It said,
get going! Let’s ride!

My fingers started tapping away, slowly at first and then building faster and faster, like Ravel’s
Bolero
. I sat there with the sensation my fingers were not mine own. I didn’t even look at the screen, afraid of what I would see. They worked furiously and my wrists started to ache. I had no idea what I wrote and still don’t. I worked like that for hours it seemed, my back burning, my arms aching. Sweat ran down my face and stung my eyes.

At times I would pull my hand away from the keys, with what seemed like incredible difficulty, to wipe the sweat from my face. They would then be violently yanked back to the keyboard. I was aware that I breathed heavily and my dry throat had become sore. I was desperate to get up from the chair, to get a drink of water—or better, gin—but couldn’t break the hold. The force kept me in the chair, hunched over, using my hands to write its horrible tale.

When I finished I sat panting, my skin cool and glistening with perspiration. My shirt stuck uncomfortably to my back and I remember a burning in my crotch, like the chafe you get after running on a blistering hot day. My hands sat limply in my lap and I felt overwhelmingly exhausted. I looked with trepidation at the blinking light on the screen of my computer where a box flashed.

Save?

I wanted to get up, to ignore the computers question or better yet to press the delete key. Instead my hand raised slowly, moved the mouse to place the arrow over the
yes
box and without any help from me, my trembling finger pressed the mouse. The story collapsed to the bottom of the screen, turning into a benign marker.

I got up from the chair and walked slowly to the door. I felt my stomach heave and tasted bile in the back of my throat. I dashed down the hall to the bathroom and dropped to my knees in front of my beckoning porcelain friend.

I vomited violently, heard the splashing in the toilet in the dark, trying desperately to suck air into my lungs between each heave of my stomach. When I was empty, to the point I felt I might actually collapse into myself, dry and brittle, I leaned forward relishing the coolness of the toilet rim on my forehead.

I didn’t try to figure out what I had written as I sat hunched over the stench of my own vomit. In fact, I struggled with all my will not to think about it. After a few minutes I shakily got to my feet, my stomach settling an uneasy truce with the rest of my body and staggered towards my bedroom. I paused at my office door just long enough to see the computer screen was again black. That was when I remembered, it had all been a dream. I wobbled towards the bedroom but stopped in the doorway.

The corner of the room, the dark corner beside my closet door, pulsed with a subtle but definite glow. Not orange like when a campfire is simmering its last breath of heat but a deep crimson red, the same red as the cursor had turned on the screen as I wrote. And a sound. I had never heard a sound like it but I will never forget it.

There is no glow in present time for me (not that I would see it, I sleep with all the lights on these days) but my mind can still hear that horrible sound—a wet crunching, behind a low throaty growl. It was the sound of something horrible. And it was feeding. Feeding on the bones and flesh of whomever was sacrificed. I heard a rustling, like it settled into a more comfortable position and then a terrible crack followed by a tearing—the sound of a body being torn apart between strong jaws and sharp teeth.

I dashed down the stairs, aware of a child like cry emanating from my own throat. I was intent on making it to the back door, of dashing into the moonlight on the beach, of running crying on the sand to the first light and comfort of people I could find. But I didn’t make it. Instead, I made it to the bottom of the steps, engulfed by a near exhaustion and the couch called to me in a sweet low voice.

I collapsed onto it heavily, almost paralyzed with fatigue. I was able to get my arms up enough to press my hands against my ears, to block out the now distant but distinct slobbering growl of the creature upstairs. It swallowed the last chunks of flesh from our victim, then licked spilled crumbs and blood from my carpet. I passed out, pulled deeply into the darkness of a dreamless sleep.

My bladder jolted me awake. Since I had turned to gin, a few beers is not enough to give me a buzz but still goes through my plumbing with relative ease. I was uncomfortably full and dashed to the downstairs bathroom. I felt haunted by my nightmare and was afraid to go upstairs but knew I had to—to search for my sanity.

I glanced into my office in passing, then headed instead to the upstairs bathroom. The upstairs bathroom reeked of vomit, the un-flushed toilet full of little chunks of undigested white pizza floating in a pool of puke. I listened intently for sounds from my bedroom, heard none. I flushed my dinner and walked slowly to my office, dreading what I might find.

It was as I remembered it, the computer screen dark. It took me a moment to find the strength to move my legs and walk to my desk. I moved slowly, trembling. A nervous sweat beaded again on my face. I sat down stiffly and reached out with a trembling hand to move the mouse, bringing the screen to life. I saw my floating book cover briefly, then it disappeared, leaving multiple icons down the left side. I glanced at the strip at the bottom of the screen and there it was; a blue rectangle with a big
W
in a white square and written next to it was a title,
Whore’s Death
–
Microsoft
…

Barb was dead. I knew it immediately. What was left of her was digesting in the belly of the beast that now called the corner of my bedroom home. It was sleeping again, until nightfall, when I would be called to serve up another dish to its voracious appetite for blood.

I felt my stomach contract. Tears welled up in my eyes. I had no love for that woman who had used me and then traded up for a more expensive model but I’m no killer either, not of my own volition anyway. I had shared a bed with her for several years, had enjoyed some good times and then had fed her to the creature possessing my computer, my soul.

With fear and disgust, I moved my mouse viciously on the rock and roll pad and placed the white arrow over the blue rectangle. For a moment, I hesitated, torn by a sudden need to know how we had killed her but then, knowing the knowledge would drive me insane, I clicked the right button.  The cursor scrolled down to the delete prompt. I clicked it so hard it made my finger hurt.

“Are you sure you want to delete file
Whores Death-Microsoft Word
to the trash bin?”
my accomplice asked.

Fuck yes!
I answered by clicking the
yes
icon and the file disappeared. I clicked on the little trash can on the left of the screen, then on the
empty trash bin
icon and it was done. I had disposed of the murder weapon.

That was when I realized the shit I was in. They would definitely come calling again. They would be sure I had done it—the scorned ex-husband. First Chad and now Barb. What would they find at her house? I saw them in my mind, taking pictures of the blood-spattered walls, picking up what was left of my former lover and dropping the pieces into bags to be analyzed later. I shook my head violently, tossing the images out of my mind.

And now what? I was out of enemies. Whom would I slice up and serve in the sushi bar of my mind and computer now? Would it be friends or strangers? I knew for sure it wouldn’t stop, that the creature in my room would demand feeding, again and again and again. I had to stop it somehow. I had to make it stop now. I wasn’t just horrified, I was terrified. I don’t even fish for Christ’s sake and now I had a role in the deaths of two people. Not even strangers or people trying to kill me, like in war. These were people I knew, one of whom I had once loved.