by J. Thorn
Kelly ignored Robert and closed her eyes.
He walked over to the tripod and turned the camera back on. He waited several moments for the machinery to come to life before hitting the round circle to begin recording. He breathed on the lens and used a small white handkerchief to wipe it clean.
“It’s show time!” Robert slid his arms out of his shirt and tossed it to the floor. He unbuttoned his pants and let them drop before stepping out of the legs. He stood before Kelly in nothing but his boxer shorts, holding the belt in one hand.
“I’m so excited that I’m not sure how long this is gonna last. Baseball, right? Thinking about baseball helps to keep from shooting early?”
Kelly remained motionless, eyes closed. Robert shrugged and pulled his boxer shorts down, a stubby erection bobbing back and forth below his paunch. Robert paused with the realization that he would appear on the tape, too. He looked at the camera.
“Hadn’t thought about me being in it, but I guess I don’t have much choice now, do I?”
With the camera rolling, Robert squatted down in front of Kelly. He sniffed her like a wild beast and ran his tongue up the side of her face. She shivered, keeping her eyes and mouth shut.
“I might have to go a few rounds with you. I’m about ready to rub one out right now.” He sat down on the floor facing her, staring between her legs. “No reason why I can’t do something for you, too,” he said, nudging her knees apart. “Can you spread ’em for me?”
Kelly smiled, her eyes opening enough to see his position. “No reason to go out with pain when I can go out with pleasure, right, Robert?”
It was Robert’s turn to close his eyes, his cock jerking in anticipation of what was about to happen. “Right, Kelly. That’s right.”
“Good, Robert,” she said. “I want you to taste all of me.”
“How do you like it, Kelly?”
“Slow. Go slow, Robert.”
He nodded, bending down between Kelly’s legs. He had one hand on the belt and the other around his erection.
“Wait one second, hon.”
“For what?” he asked.
“This,” replied Kelly as she drew her right leg back and punched it out, driving her heel into Robert’s face.
She felt the cartilage in his nose shatter as the force of her kick knocked him backwards. Robert’s eyes shot open as he stumbled from the force of the kick, the back of his head slamming into the rusted radiator. Robert let out a muffled cry before twitching on the floor, blood pouring from his face and the back of his head. Kelly waited and watched as his chest hitched several times and then became perfectly still. Her eyes felt electric, buzzing in their sockets as they focused on his chest. Kelly counted in her head, and when she reached twenty she began to believe he was really dead.
She took a deep breath and started to cry, letting all of her muscles relax. Robert had gotten his snuff film. But if she did not find a way to free herself from the bonds, she would be on it after all.
Chapter 2
He had tried whiskey and then herbal tea, but neither could bring on a restful sleep. Doug took the phone off the hook and waited for the incessant bleating to stop.
Who even gets a busy signal anymore?
At the very least, there would be no more pocket dials, mistaken calls, or interruptions. If he could not drink himself to sleep, he could at least make sure he wouldn’t be interrupted. Taylor had taken the kids to school and would be off doing her daily errands, leaving him with an empty house and the smell of charred wood in his nostrils.
When the phone went silent, he placed the receiver on the kitchen counter.
“I’m hungry,” the phantom caller had said.
Doug shook his head, unable to dislodge those words. The call had to have been deliberate. He turned and walked from the kitchen to the bedroom, where two piles of laundry sat near the closet door. Doug looked at his pillow and then back to the laundry.
“If I’m not going to sleep, I might as well score some points with Tay.”
He grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of jeans from his dresser and swooped low to gather the laundry in his arms. He carried the bundle of dirty clothes to the pantry and pulled the knob on the top-loader as he dropped them inside, greeted by a pungent whiff of detergent.
I’m hungry.
Doug paused, uncertain whether the words had replayed inside his head or had just entered his ears. “I swear sometimes I think I’m going fucking nuts.” He slammed the lid down on the washing machine as the water rose inside the tumbler.
I’m hungry.
Doug turned and left the room, knowing the clean clothes would sit inside the machine once they finished, wet and getting that mildew smell that Taylor hated so much. She’d probably end up washing them again after chastising him with a wagging finger, but Doug didn’t care about that right now.
He reached the kitchen and placed the landline back in the cradle on the wall. He opened a cabinet to grab a handful of cereal from one of the open boxes as well as a diet soda from the refrigerator. Doug thought about calling Frank or maybe even driving over to his house, but he was hopeful that Frank was sound asleep and resting instead of chasing phantom voices inside his head.
“I’ll bet nobody is calling him and saying they’re hungry.” Doug chuckled and tossed the cereal into his mouth. He pulled the door shut, leaving the washing machine to do its dirty work.
***
Doug drove to University General on auto-pilot while his mind sorted through the past twelve hours. There had been the conversation with Frank, the one about their fallen brother and how he had died at a time when he was questioning his future as a firefighter. Then came the explosion at 412 Maple Street. Pine Valley didn’t see many five-alarm emergencies simply because of the size of the population, and to have one with an explosion was not something Doug expected to see again in his lifetime. Then there was the odd way Frank had reacted at the scene, as if he was not in his right mind. As Doug drove mindlessly toward the hospital, he wrestled with his thoughts and finally reminded himself that they had pulled out survivors. Well, at least they had been alive at the time. Judging by their condition at the scene, Doug was expecting to see the county coroner at the hospital.
He parked in a space reserved for hospital personnel and walked through the automatic, sliding-glass doors and into the reception area. Doug nodded at several EMTs as they passed, pushing an empty gurney, straps hanging loose over the side of the stretcher. Doug continued through the halls of the east wing and approached the nurse’s station near ICU, where the smell of disinfectant and the sound of adult contemporary music pumped through the conditioned air. Helen saw him coming, and he could see her pudgy fingers making a few last-second adjustments to the bun fastened atop her head.
“Morning, Doug.”
“Hi, Helen.”
Helen felt her face flush and her heart flutter. “Seems y’all were busy last night down on Maple.”
“Yes,” Doug replied with a sigh. “We lost a few.”
“But you saved a few, too.”
“I guess so. Are they . . .?” Doug began to ask before trailing off.
“Yes,” said Helen. “Both. But the doctors aren’t sure for how long. Jones was already here to try to take a statement or whatever the hell it is the boys in blue have to do after something like this.”
“Are they conscious?”
“What’s this about, Doug? I can’t begin to give you patient updates unless you’re a physician or a family member. You know the policy.”
Doug smiled, realizing just how much Helen enjoyed having leverage on him. “I pulled one out. Just wanted to see the person.”
“That ain’t FD policy, neither. You wanna tell me what you’re up to?”
“No, Helen, I don’t,” Doug said, looking over his shoulder at another nurse hammering the keyboard on a crusty computer. “Can’t you give me five minutes? I promise I’ll be in and out. I have to do this, and I’m not sure why.” He thrust bot
h hands into the pockets of his jeans and shrugged at Helen.
“Five, ten minutes tops,” she replied. “And if anyone else comes into that room, I’m denying I even saw ya here.”
Doug winked at Helen, bringing a rosy glow to her cheeks. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
“You gotta bone me one,” Helen replied under her breath, staring after Doug’s ass as he walked by.
***
He had looked down at the clipboard on the desk and noticed Helen’s tapping finger on 5467 and 5468. Doug followed the numbers down the hallway until he stood in front of the rooms. He glanced up and down the hallway once more, seeing nothing out of the ordinary during the morning rounds. Doug had spent his fair share of time in and out of hospitals, and this situation seemed as normal as any other. He put his hand on the door latch of 5467 and pushed it open.
Doug felt the warm sunshine on his face. The windows faced east, and the blinds were up. The bed sat near the rear corner of the room, with a myriad of monitors and cables where the headboard should have been. Tubes ran from clear bags and into the mass of flesh lying in the bed, wrapped like an Egyptian pharaoh in white, cotton bandages. The man’s fingertips, charred and blackened, were the only skin Doug could see. There were no personal belongings on the dresser, and nobody had been in the room, judging by the placement of the two chairs in the opposite corner. It did not take long for the odors to remind Doug that he was in a room where people clung to life and where many lost that fight. The hospital’s cleaning crew had tried to mask the smell of burnt flesh and human waste, but their efforts hadn’t been entirely successful.
Doug walked toward the foot of the bed. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him that the man had been severely burned. He inched closer, listening to the machine pumping air in and out of the man’s damaged lungs. Doug stopped, feeling his mouth go dry and his palms begin to sweat. He stood on the side of the bed, hovering over the poor creature beneath. He wondered if this was the person he had pulled from the rubble or if it had been Frank who saved him.
“Hey,” he whispered.
The body on the bed remained motionless.
Doug saw the stains on the bandages covering the person’s face, a marbled mix of dried blood in varying shades of red. He could smell the burnt flesh and sucralfate cream as he put his head closer to the pillow. “Can you hear me?”
The body twitched, and Doug jumped backwards as if he had stepped on a downed electrical line. The machines continued to run, as did the electronic lungs keeping this person alive.
A soft sigh came from beneath the bandages. Doug leaned over and used his thumb and forefinger to slowly separate them, revealing bare white teeth unobstructed by skin or lips. He reeled, grabbing for the guardrail on the bed and steadying himself on both feet. Doug cursed at himself for the reaction, not acceptable given his profession and experience.
“Others?” The word came from that wretched mouth, full of pain and tubes. Doug knew the voice was not in his head. “Survive?”
“Yes. I think so. One survivor besides you.”
The body shivered and then sighed again. “Kill it.”
Doug stood and raised his eyebrows. He glanced at the wall and saw that he had spent more time in the room than he thought. His charm would work on Helen, but not on anyone else coming into the room.
“Then me.”
Doug took a step backward. The words coming from the damaged human stole his breath like a punch to the gut. The words were hissed, but their pronunciation and meaning were clear. They spoke of murder. Twice.
“I’m a firefighter. And even if I wasn’t, I couldn’t do what you’re asking me to do.”
He realized there had to be more to the story than a drug deal gone sour or the end of a prostitution ring at the hands of a natural gas leak. These people had been in that house for a reason, and whatever it was, it was serious business.
“Kill it. Kill me.”
The words preceded a shrill alarm blaring from the apparatus above the patient’s head. Doug looked down and then at the wall to realize he had a matter of seconds before the room would be full of doctors rushing to save the broken wretch. He shuffled to the door, slid out into the hallway, and sidled down the wall toward the lobby as a rush of blue garb and white coats blew past and into 5467. Doug wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and collapsed into a plastic-coated chair next to a soundless television.
Kill, he thought. Twice.
***
He waited for them to enter 5467 before glancing at the numbers across the hall. Doug was not sure if he would have entered that room otherwise, but after his brief conversation with the survivor in 5467, he could not imagine leaving without speaking to that person, as well. He walked toward the door and could see the back of Helen’s bun as she undoubtedly was giving someone a hard time about visiting hours or gift restrictions.
Every good organization needs a hard-ass, he thought. Wouldn’t mind having Helen on dispatch down at the station.
5468.
The door looked exactly like every other door in the hospital, yet Doug thought the floor was beginning to slide out from underneath his feet. He stared at the paint, a fresh coat covering decades of previous ones, judging from the runs on the hinges. Doug examined the scratches on the door and a line across the strike plate that appeared new. He realized after several moments that his rational mind was attempting to stall. It was desperately trying to distract him, to keep his legs from propelling the rest of his body through the door and to what waited beyond.
5468.
With every fiber of his being screaming in defiance, Doug looked back at the closed door of 5467, listening to the muffled voices of doctors working feverishly to resuscitate the broken human inside, and placed his hand on the door latch of 5468.
The room was identical to the one he had just left, with the windows flipped to the opposite wall. He had been in this hospital hundreds of times, yet he could not imagine what it looked like from the outside. This wing sat behind the main building, and he did not have much reason to drive around behind it. A short, shrill beep from the equipment tethered to the poor creature in the bed interrupted his internal dialogue about hospital architecture.
The man had a chart like that of the patient across the hall, and from Doug’s perspective, he appeared to be hooked up to the same bevy of machines, cables, and tubes that hissed and pulsed while keeping him alive. However, this one did not have bandages across his face. It appeared as though they had been pulled down to expose the man’s eyes. Doug felt a sweat breaking out on his upper lip and sat down in a chair next to the bed before the vertigo kicked in. Rounds would be made soon, and he would have a lot of explaining to do if he was found in the room. And he would have to deal with the wrath of Helen.
Doug looked at the man’s face from his chair. The eyes were closed, eyelids intact but charred black like the rest of his exposed skin.
I can’t look away, he thought.
Doug stood and placed both hands on the railing of the bed, hovering over the man. He watched as pinkish fluids left one tube and clear fluids came from another. He was not a doctor, but Doug believed neither man would pull through this. He knew how fire damaged tissue and the shock to the body was more than most could handle. And yet, there was something about these men that made him think otherwise.
Kill it. Kill me.
Doug shook and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Can you hear me?” he asked.
No answer.
The man lay still while the machines hummed around him. Doug heard a muffled sound. He stopped and held his breath. His heart raced in his chest, and a queasy feeling settled in his stomach.
“Can you hear me? Can you speak?” Doug asked.
Two bloodshot eyes sprang open from beneath red, charred eye sockets. Doug jumped backwards, stumbling into a chair and knocking it on its side.
“You’re conscious? You can talk?” he asked, the questions spilling from his mou
th.
The eyes turned and looked at Doug, and he felt the warm trickle of urine down his leg. Doug whimpered and shook, his hands grasping the bed rails to keep his body from falling to the floor.
“I’m so hungry,” the patient said, the words hissing and slurring from beneath soiled bandages. “I knew you’d come.”
“Who are you?” Doug asked, not wanting to hear the answer.
“My friends call me Drew. Where is Frank?”
Chapter 3
His tongue felt like sandpaper, and his eyes hurt. Doug stood next to the creature in the bed with his feet fixed to the floor as if cemented there.
“I said, where’s Frank?” The words came out as though the person was chewing meaty gristle. Doug thought he could hear the man’s lips cracking open with every word.
“I don’t know,” Doug replied.
The head turned, pulling the tubes taut and shifting the bandages down. “I need to talk to Frank.”
“Who are you?” Doug managed to ask as the mental fog cleared from his consciousness.
“Who or what?” came another question. “The name is Drew, but that’s not really what you’re asking me, is it?”
Doug shook his head, aware the burn victim’s eyes were closed and he would not see the movement. Doug knew the man could feel the gesture.
“You really want to know how I’m still alive and how I’m able to talk with you. That’s what’s really got your balls in a bunch.” The man coughed, knocking a tube askew and sending a thin line of yellow saliva down his chest to dangle from the bandages covering his chin.
“Who carried you out? Me, or . . .”
“Frank. Frank carried me out. You had the Ravster.”
Doug looked up at the door.
“Yep,” the man in the bed replied. “He’s gonna pull through, too. The old man, he taught the bumblehead a thing or two that he couldn’t find online.”
“I don’t know what . . .”
“Shut up, Doug.”