90_Minutes_to_Live (13 page)

It was unbearable but more unbearable was the thought that when darkness came, I would be unable to fight the beast’s possession and another person would die. I had to go, but where? I realized the when was more important than where and that I needed to be gone before nightfall. Far away,
somewhere
where the beast in the corner and the computer in my office could not reach out and find me.

The knock on the door didn’t bother me, didn’t make me jump. I knew it was coming. My friends in blue would be on my front porch, here to tell me the news and study my face for reaction. I wasn’t frightened this time because I knew there couldn’t possibly be any physical evidence tying me to the crime and all I had to do was hold to my story—I was here working all night—not too tricky since it was actually the truth. I had no evidence of it, save my beer bottles and pizza box but fuck ‘em. They had the burden of proof, right? Just be polite, act surprised and horrified, tell them my story, and usher them out.

By tomorrow I would be long gone. Tomorrow I would be far, far away. I have no idea how I would make a living as part of this master plan but with the cops at my door and my ex-wife’s corpse still warm, I really wasn’t worrying about it yet. I had a fair amount of money stashed away and a couple of advances still coming on my contract but not a lifetime’s worth. I am a young man and have proven in many ways to have no skills other than my twisted (my mother’s word) imagination but all I was thinking about was getting the hell out of there.

I answered the door and it was indeed my two friends. But the news they brought was not expected.

“Good morning sir,”

“Good morning,” I answered and waited without asking them in.

“Sir,” the older cop said, “We were wondering if your ex-wife might be here?”

Well that was a bit of a surprise. Especially since I knew whatever was left of her was indeed here, upstairs in the hot belly of my beast, being broken down into her molecular components.

“Uh, no…” I answered, confounded. “Why on earth would she be here?”

“Just checking everywhere sir. Seems she has gone missing.”

Gone missing. What in the hell did that mean? She was missing alright, working her way slowly through the gut of my insatiable roommate, getting converted from a self-centered bitch into what would doubtlessly be one hellish shit. My surprise was genuine is the point. We spoke only a few minutes more, me answering questions about my whereabouts the evening before, assuring them I had not spoken to her in quite a while and certainly not in the last twenty-four hours. They were polite and didn’t seem too concerned for her safety. I resisted the urge to ask them if they had any news on Chad’s death, afraid that looking curious might make me look guilty of something. They thanked me and left.

At no point did I entertain the possibility Barb was still alive. I knew she was dead, knew we had killed her just as we had killed Chad. And I still knew that I had to go. It would not stop until I did. It did occur to me leaving would make me look like I had done something wrong of course but that was hardly a concern then. I had to go or I would help the beast kill again.

The rest of the morning was not worth telling. I packed a large suitcase, called a travel agent and arranged a flight and a place to stay. I called my mom and my sister, told them the recent events were too unbearable. I couldn’t work and was going away for a while to Greece, to a little place where I could get back to my writing in relative quiet. I recall crying during both calls. Not for the reasons they thought of course but my grief was real, bloodied as it was by guilt.

I called my agent and friend Dan and asked him to take care of my business affairs while I was away, working on my new book. I had even called the number on the card the police officer had given me, telling them I had to get away. I gave them a number where I could be reached, on a remote island near Crete, should they have any other questions.

By early afternoon I was on a plane, out over the Atlantic Ocean, alone with my thoughts. I felt weak, having so readily run away, leaving the beast to possess my home and my computer but what else could I have done? I had no real plans for when and if I would ever return and I believed I would never come back.

Well, I am back. The months in Greece are surreal. I feel like I just awoke from a pleasant dream. I drank a lot of beer while I was there, laid on the beach, hung out in clubs. I got laid a few times, mostly tourist girls—always drunk and never memorable. I found a little place to hang out, a seaside restaurant-bar a short walk from my villa, on a cliff looking out over the blue sea. The owner and I became friends of sorts, filling my need for someone to be familiar with and his need to add some U.S. dollars to his till.

We talked about nothing, but at length, almost every night. No one knew me, though to be honest, even in the States I rarely run into a
fan
and no one ever recognizes me. Occasionally in conversation it will come out I am a writer and I will name some of my books when asked, only to be greeted with “oh, you’re that guy”.

I did get a few phone calls. I had no phone in my room, which was fine by me but would sometimes get summoned to front the desk. Most were from my mother, one from my sister. I got a few from the St. Petersburg Police. They continued looking for some more ideas on where my ex-wife might have gone, questions about what else I might know, when I was coming back, that type of thing. They never found her. They were working on the assumption she had disappeared in grief and continued to look for her, but assumed she had left the area. Might I know where she would go? Did she have friends out of town? A favorite vacation spot? Never an accusation outright but I surely remained a suspect for them.

I know where she went of course.

I said before, this is the first thing I remember writing in seven months and that’s true. I didn’t even keep pens or stationary in my little cabana. I felt nervous and frightened even signing my name on a credit card receipt for Christ’s sake. But I know now, I did write while away. I wrote a lot in fact, as I learned just hours ago and perhaps that was why I had to come back. It was only yesterday that I heard the horrifying news and even writing it down now fills me with terror.

I had asked my sister to pick up my mail once a week from the floor of my foyer where it falls through my mail slot. She forwarded it to Dan Howard, business looking stuff—bills and the like. I guess he would do about anything I asked, if he thought it would help me get him another manuscript sometime soon. I am way behind my deadlines now but have lived comfortably on my advances without much guilt. The other stuff, junk mail and such, she had been putting on my desk for my return, which they had expected much sooner than now and I had hoped would never come.

I found out about the letters by mistake. I had gone to the desk to pay the cute young girl who worked there every day. Her English was poor but after a few confusing moments I realized she was asking about letters I had sent and wondering if I had one to go out. The impact of what she asked grabbed me tightly by the throat. I tasted bile in my mouth.

“Your letters—for the mailing in America,” she tried to explain.

“What letters?”

“For mailing in America,” she smiled again; confused by my look, no doubt thinking I didn’t understand her. But I did, all too well. Then she reached under the counter and produced an envelope.

The letter had no return address but the addressee was me, at my home in Florida. The handwriting was mine but the letters more block like. I didn’t open it, couldn’t possibly open it. I stared at it in horror for a moment, then looked up at the girl. My face must have been easy to read because she looked uncomfortable, maybe even a little scared.

“How many?” I choked out.

She shook her head nervously, not understanding.

“How many?” I asked again, waving the letter in front of her. “Many? One-two-three-four-five….” My voice grew louder because we all know the louder you talk, the easier it is to understand a raving lunatic. But she did understand and nodded quickly to let me know.

“Yes, yes…Manny! Wery, wery manny!” she started flashing up fingers, ten at a time, over and over. I felt dizzy, my head pounding. I finally relented to the heaving of my stomach and dropped the letter to the floor, bolting to the small lobby washroom.  I spit up my poorly digested late-night snack and beer into the sink, my head swimming and dizzy, sweat pouring down my body. I have absolutely no recollection of writing anything—much less writing regularly—what I can only assume to be more horrible death stories to feed my pet back home.

But I had—written them and then put them in envelopes, addressed them to myself, charged postage to my room I suppose and asked them to be mailed. How was that possible? How could a beast that controlled my mind and computer over three thousand miles away, reach out across the distance, and use me as a weapon even there, in my sanctuary? But there it was. Could it mean the creature was inside me? Or worse, the creature
was
me, my mind, my rage? Was it some force in
me
which used my words to kill, horribly and hungrily, from the quiet of my little office at home and now my paradise on the other side of the earth?

I didn’t think so—I still don’t think so. I had heard the beast in the corner of my room. I had heard his powerful jaws, tearing flesh from my ex-wife and licking blood from my carpet. I had heard his growling snore as he digested Chad in the dark. I had felt the heat, smelled the stench. And what about the glow—that horrible blood-red glow I had seen twice?

That was real, right?

I cleaned up the mess in the sink as best I could, running the tap water and using a paper towel to sweep the chunks of meat into the little metal trash can.  I felt guilty that the cutie at the desk would probably be cleaning up my mess, aerating out the smell later.

I walked quickly through the lobby without stopping or acknowledging my hostess, stepping over the letter on the floor like it was a bloody arm at the scene of an accident. I headed straight to my room and started throwing my wrinkled things into my suitcase.

I hadn’t run away at all you see? My cowardly escape had stopped nothing. The creature in my house still ate blood and I still fed it. Now it just ordered out. I have no idea how many stories I wrote in a drunken haze, sitting in the lobby in the middle of the night but apparently, it was “wery, wery manny”.

I wonder how I looked to the night clerk, an older man who spoke
no
English. I was another crazy American, writing furiously on stationary, a wild and crazed look on his face, then stuffing the stories into envelopes and dropping them at his desk. I wondered who had been our victims. It couldn’t have been people I knew. I mean, the cops might have mentioned it if all of Barb and Chad’s friends had started disappearing or been found dead on roadways and in alleys, torn apart alive.

I couldn’t be a suspect of course. They talked to me several times and knew, full well, I was far away, in the Mediterranean, a coward hiding in luxury by the sea. But they would have had to mention it. Would not have been able to contain themselves, even if they had no thoughts of me as a mass murderer.

So it couldn’t be people I knew. Who then? Just innocent people going about their lives, no bother to me or my Demon. Were they mothers and fathers? Children? Oh, my God, could they have been children? And how had we killed them? I knew from my limited experience with Chad’s death and the horror of my own imagination, the imagination that had made me a very comfortable living, that they were terrible deaths. Painful, bloody deaths. I cried uncontrollably as I zipped my suitcase, then sat on the floor, sobbing.

Those same thoughts haunted me on my cab ride to the airport, as I stood in line to pay (a shitload of money) for the first available flight home and as I drank my way across Europe and the Atlantic ocean.

Now I am home or what use to be my home. Well, technically not IN my home. When I got here a while ago, before I started writing this, I was struck as I came through the door by the horrible smell. It lingers even out here on my deck, as I tell my last story. Even as I have acclimated to it, I’m still nauseated by the aroma of death.

Writing about it now is making me more aware of the stench and I feel the same bile rising as I did when I first walked in. It sent me out here, where I sit cross-legged in a corner of my cedar patio. It is a smell of hot death, like if you were to burn blood in a barrel somehow. It is mixed with a sulfur smell and something much more foul, like flesh rotting in the sun. I have twice come across the rotting corpse of a dolphin on the beach, baking in the Florida heat and the smell was horrible.  It was nothing compared to this.

So now, all I have left is to tell you how this story ends. That is the struggle for young writers but comes to me effortlessly. I’m not saying I necessarily know the ending when I start writing but it is always obvious to me when I get there.

It’s like that today. When I sat down to write this, huddled uncomfortably in the corner of my deck with my legal pad and two pens.

I know.

I knew in my heart when I left Greece and still know now. I am not a killer. Despite my thoughts, I know the power at work here is not inside my mind. I guess I needed you to know it too and so I scribbled this story. The beast is real but it’s not me. I’m the weapon it chose, for whatever reason (perhaps it read some of my work and appreciated my twisted imagination). Does it matter? It was me and now here I am.