Thirty Minute Guarantee

by Barrett O'Donnell

dressed and left his apartment and went down the stairs to the front door, then he saw it. A black sport utility vehicle parked around the corner. He saw that as he crossed the street the SUV would pull up to him and three men in black suits would approach him and then his vision went dark. He didn’t know what they did to him but he knew he had to get out at least for a little while.

  Just outside the door four people sat talking. The man sitting directly in front of the door looked up and saw Eric standing at the other end of the hall and nudged the man next to him. The two of them stood and moved to either side of the doorway. The others around them looked up at them and then at where they were looking. Seeing Eric they all slowly began to stand and move aside.

  Eric moved towards the door as a path formed outside leading away from his building. The walkway was lined with people from all walks of life. There were men, women and children of all ages. There were the wealthy and the poor, young and the old. He opened the door and stepped out into the fresh air. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to breath air that hadn’t been re-circulated by the window air conditioner he had in his bedroom. The air felt cool against his skin as he passed the faces of the people that wanted him to help them. The path lead away from the building turning to the right, directing him to go down the road. He thought maybe this was their way of telling him to run, to leave the area and never come back, giving him an easy out and chance at a fresh start.

  He passed by the last of the people gathered outside his apartment expecting them to grab at him and start to ask him to tell them something they wanted to know but they just stood there and watched him walk by. He looked at their faces, studied them as he passed and thought that they didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the crowd. They seemed too clean cut, too calm. The others shifted nervously, their eyes almost pleaded with him to go back inside. They didn’t have the look of those who were waiting for something.

  Eric made it to the corner and stopped to wait for the crosswalk signal to change. He waited for a minute before he turned to look at the crowd of people he had left behind. Everyone either had their head down or had sat back down. No one was watching him. Except the last two people he had walked by. They were watching him very closely. He turned back to the crosswalk and waited for another thirty seconds before it changed giving him the okay to cross.

  He stepped up on the curb on the other side of the street when the reflection of the sun caught the corner of his eye. He looked to his right and had to shield his eyes from the glare. After a moment his eyes adjusted and he saw what he was expecting. The black sport utility vehicle with blacked out windows. He looked away from the glare and picked up the pace of his steps hoping he would be able to change his future and avoid the men in the suits.

  He had made it another thirty feet before the SUV came around the corner and stopped just ahead of him in the street. Two men got out of the passenger side of the vehicle and blocked his path. A third had gotten out of the driver side and came around behind him blocking his retreat.

  The man from the passenger side backseat held the back door to the SUV open while the other two just stared at him. He didn’t know what they were there for just that darkness was next. He had seen this coming but he had to try something. He couldn’t just stay stuck in his apartment. He slumped his shoulders and climbed into the back seat followed by one of the suits. Another climbed into the passenger seat while the third went around and climbed in on Eric’s other side. As soon as the doors were closed the suit to Eric’s right pulled out a syringe and jammed it into his neck injecting God only knows what into his veins. Within seconds Eric’s eyes became impossible to keep open and his arms felt like they were filled with concrete. Before he could even think to ask what they were doing he was unconscious.

  Eric awoke confused, he sprang out of his bed and stumbled. Pain shot through his head from the back to the front and back again. He felt as though he was hung-over. The light spilling across the room hurt his eyes and his stomach growled with hunger. He had no idea how long he had been out.

  Once the pain subsided and he could focus his eyes he looked around in disbelief. He was in his own bed. He couldn’t imagine why some one would kidnap him and drug him only to return him to his own home. He walked around his apartment looking for any signs of tampering. Any sign that his place had been bugged, but he found nothing out of the ordinary. Thinking about what had happened, he stumbled his way toward the bathroom. He cursed when he stubbed his toe on the coffee table in the living room nearly knocking over the dish he made when he was in elementary school that now held his spare change and car keys. He turned on the light over the sink in bathroom and checked his neck. He found a little red dot on the right side of his neck, it looked infected. It really did happen. He stood there poking at the puncture mark, flinching at the sting, it felt infected. He splashed cold water from the faucet on his face and neck.

  He looked haggard, pale faced with bags under his eyes. His hair had started turning gray in spots. His body had started following in the same direction. His joints hurt and creaked when he moved. He groaned just picking up a towel to dry his face.

  On his way to the kitchen he looked out his living room window at what had now become the regular mass of people camped out in front of his building. He sighed, for a moment he had actually thought the people might have left. Normally he could hear the constant chatter from the group below his window but today there was nothing. A tractor-trailer went speeding by on the street without a sound. Eric grabbed the bottom of the window frame and pulled up. Nothing. The window didn’t budge. Another car went by without a sound. He tried again. Still nothing. He checked the lock. The latch was open.

  He went for the door and found that there was no doorknob. It had been replaced by a solid brass plate. He tried to grab the edge of the door but there wasn’t one. The door’s edge was inside the wall. He went to the kitchen and grabbed a screwdriver from the drawer next to the refrigerator. He went back to the door looking for the hinges knowing they were on the inside, because like all apartment doors his swung inward. The hinges were gone too. Panic and confusion began to set in. He looked around for anything that might be able to help him open the door but found nothing. He turned back to the window. It wouldn’t open but he could break it and call out for help. Or even climb down. He was only on the third floor.

  Eric grabbed the first thing he could find that would have enough weight to break the glass pane of the window. He picked up the bowl he used for his car keys and pocket change off the coffee table in the living room, spilling several dollars in change on the floor, and threw it as hard as he could at the window. The bowl hit the window dead center and fell, bouncing off the windowsill before landing on the floor. The window didn’t break, not completely. The glass was clearly cracked. It had spider webbed out in several directions from the spot where the bowl had struck but it wasn’t a window. What Eric saw outside the window now was the same as it was before except that the image was now broken and distorted by the cracks in the glass.

  He ran up to the window and put his hand on the pane. It was warm, like a television that had been left on for too long. Eric bent down and picked up the bowl again. He raised it over his head and brought down like a hammer falling on a nail. The screen popped as the bowl connected with it just above the center of the web and Broadway in Lancaster disappeared.

  Eric staggered backwards in disbelief dropping the bowl to the floor. The backs of his legs bumped the coffee table and he sat down hard on top of it the screwdriver still in his hand. Then he heard a click and the crackle of a speaker turning on, then a voice.

  “Mr. Hayes. You need to calm down. Just sit back and relax. Someone will be with you shortly.”

  Eric looked around for the source of the voice. His heart was racing. Trying to calm himself he concentrated on his future again. The fire and blood came then went. He saw nothing. He didn’t have thirty minutes left.

  In a room adjacent to his apart
ment two men sat at a computer consol watching several closed circuit television monitors displaying Eric’s apartment. They watched him as he sat on the coffee table looking around. One of the men picked the receiver up from a phone with no buttons.

  “Sir, he’s awake now. We have a problem. There seems to be a glitch with the audio system for the windows.” The man paused for moment then said “yes sir.”

  He hung up the phone and turned to his partner. “He’s coming down now.”

  A minute later the door to Eric’s apartment slid open and three men walked in. Eric stood up and turned to face them. He recognized two of the men from the black SUV. They were wearing the same black suits as before but now he could see they were also wearing radios with the curly ear pieces commonly seen worn by the Secret Service. The third man was wearing a dark gray suit with a pin of the flag on his lapel over his heart. He was an older gentleman with neatly combed salt and pepper hair.

  The two men from the SUV stopped just inside the door, one to either side. The older man came walking forward but stopped several feet away from Eric.

  “Who are you?” Asked Eric

  “You don’t