by Rex Bolt
“What Reggie said, was when his brother Billy was in basic training for the Marines, somewhere in Carolina I believe …”
“That’d be Parris Island,” Pike said. “South Carolina.”
“Yes, there then,” Cathy said. “The essence of it is, he said his brother went back in time.”
“Oh no,” Pike said. “Here we go. Can you stop with this lunatic? … Please?”
“Well, I simply wanted to inform you. I’m not intending to judge, one way or the other.”
“Back in time, HOW exactly?”
“I don’t know much more, and I’m not sure Reggie does either. Apparently his brother told him he did it twice, once back a year, once back five years.”
“Yeah. In his mind.”
“That could be,” she said. “Although Mr. Gillmore has actually brought up time travel in class.”
“Is that right … we’ll he’s a nutcase too.” Pike had Gillmore for sophomore biology. He was teaching an astronomy class this year, which Cathy was taking, a new thing at school. The guy looked like a homeless person, wore the same worn out sport coat every day, and had a beard and long hair.
Cathy said, “So anyhow … goodnight then?”
“Thanks,” Pike said, not wanting her to go. What he really wanted to ask was where she was tonight, until 2 in the morning, but he knew it was none of his damn business.
“And I heard about you and Alicia,” she said. “I’m happy for you.”
Pike started to say something, but it would only sound stupid, so he thanked her again and hung up and tried to go to sleep.
He woke up at 4:30, a headache coming on now, and he turned on the light and started scrolling around about the insane possibility someone could time travel.
Chapter 23 Demonstration
Pocatello, Idaho
September 30th 2016
For Dani Andriessen, things were uneven with Marcus after the knocking-him-off-the-couch incident.
On the one hand, he seemed different. There was a kind of wide-eyed respect for her that she felt at times. She was convinced he wasn’t fully aware of what happened that night when he was forcing himself on her, drunk as a skunk, and she flicked him off and he temporarily lost consciousness.
But she suspected that subconsciously he sort of got it. And he treated her more cautiously, like a new pit bull you’ve just adopted from the shelter that you’re concerned may be unpredictable.
The other side of it was, when he was fully blitzed he could be the same despicable human being. This happened less, fortunately, since the couch incident, and their summer had gone relatively well, but she never could fully relax as to how he might come home.
Unfortunately, there’d been another incident today. Like last time, his liquor speaking for him, it started with him trying talk her into it, and when she ignored him he reached across and ripped open her blouse, as she was trying to eat a sandwich at the kitchen table.
Dani stood up in a fury, spun Marcus around, and without giving it any thought she applied a choke hold like she had seen on television in mixed martial arts matches. You didn’t choke off the person’s airway like one would think, you merely restricted the carotid artery, which flowed to the brain, and the victim passed out within about eight seconds.
Dani had actually researched this move and studied it on YouTube prior to her ‘revelation’ … as she liked to think of it now … which was the day she started smoking her bike in the spin class and first learned that she had this super strength.
Learning the rear choke seemed like a good idea, a technique she might have to rely on at some point in her life in a worst case scenario.
Anyhow, this time in the apartment, in her impulsive state of anger, she worried she might break Marcus’s neck while she was at it, and she was able to restrain herself enough to simply pass him out. Once that happened though, and she felt him go limp, she didn’t have any problem letting him drop, and he crashed down pretty hard, which was reasonably satisfying.
Tonight she wasn’t going to wait around for him to wake up and ask what just happened. She got her keys and was out the door as he was starting to groan and spew out a few incoherent words.
Dani had gone to a therapist after the first incident. Her own take on it, she told the therapist, was Marcus was a Doctor Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde personality.
The therapist didn’t comment on that one way or the other, but she explored past relationships, and family dynamics in Dani’s house growing up. It was pretty obvious there was a pattern. Her dad hadn’t been all that different from Marcus. Great guy, life of the party, huge heart, all around fun person.
But then the drinking, and the nightmare personality reversals … Her boyfriends before Marcus were variations on the theme. There were differences, and they didn’t all come home blitzed, but the deeper issues were consistent at the core.
At one point the therapist, who was an older woman named Gail with a New York accent and a savvy way about her, asked Dani the specifics of how she smacked Marcus so hard.
Dani was very tempted to open up about the whole thing. It was an awful secret to bear, and it was ongoing, with not a single answer to how she acquired her outlandish strength, despite her best efforts scouring the internet and even the university library.
But of course it would be a disastrous mistake to confide in Gail, or anyone else, so she told her it must have been the perfect storm of a collision, his face coming forward and her hand reaching out, and Gail seemed satisfied with the explanation.
This time, tonight, after the second one, the chokehold incident, Dani got in her car and drove up Yellowstone Boulevard toward Chubbuck. There were supermarkets and strip malls on both sides, and people going about their business, moving casually in heat of the evening, eastern Idaho with a warm spell in late September.
Eventually the road slimmed from four lanes to two, and you started heading out in the country, and you passed farms and fresh hay being cut, and it was a different world.
Dani remembered a regional park somewhere around here, and she found it and drove in and parked, and there was a girls’ softball game going on. She took a seat in the stands and called Gail. That seemed prudent. She’d had six sessions with her after the first incident, and then stopped.
Gail, who was officially known as Dr. Stern, had called her back a few times, suggesting that in her opinion there was more work to do. Dani had her antennae up, knowing that therapists had to make money just like everyone else, and they had a vested interest in drawing out a patient’s therapy for as long as possible.
At the same time, she never got the impression that Gail was in it for the money, and she felt those calls to her were sincere and from the heart. Still, she politely told Gail that she felt she had things under control, and that the sessions had helped and thank you. Gail disagreed and pointed to specifics as to why, but Dani held firm.
Now though, sitting here in the stands at the softball game, she couldn’t reach her. A recording said simply the number had been disconnected. Dani looked for a new one and couldn’t find anything. She remembered Gail mentioning her husband worked for the university, so she tried searching it that way. She found the husband, a humanities professor it turned out, but on the department website it announced that he’d retired following the spring semester.
This wasn’t good news. Dani thought of Gail as a misfit around here, a kind of in-your-face Jewish lady from the east, and now things were more clear, that the husband’s teaching job was what probably brought them to Pocatello, and now that it was over they were gone.
Dani watched the game end, found a sports bar and had a bite to eat, and debated going home. It was a Friday night, though, there was nowhere she had to be in the morning, so why put yourself through that?
She remembered the Super 8 up on the hill near the medical center, where her friend Josie stayed a couple times while visiting from Indiana, and it seemed like a good place to check i
n.
The rate wasn’t bad, everything was pretty fresh, and Dani remembered she luckily had some gym clothes in her car, so she changed and went into the hot tub.
There was plenty to think about. She was going to leave Marcus now, she was convinced she had the strength. It would be hard, but at least school had started back up and she could immerse herself in being the best teacher she could. And she could find other activities to fill the void … Maybe take an art class at night, maybe join a discussion group … Weren’t there Meetups now for all those things?
Ten minutes into the hot tub soak, Dani’s mind started to relax. It was only a bump in the road. Things happened for a reason. She was a worthy person. Though she’d love to know the happened for a reason part of her physical ‘revelation’, but that was beside the point right now.
Even watching TV was better here. You had all these extra channels and the bed was pretty darn comfortable. The most refreshing part of course, you didn’t have to worry about anyone walking in, or how they might act.
Checkout time Saturday morning was 11, and Dani milked it right to the end. First she went down to the lobby for breakfast, and it was an impressive spread, with Danish pastries and make-your-own waffles, and assorted fruits and pretty good coffee actually.
She took a walk up into the hills where they’d built a cluster of luxury houses, and she pictured people’s lives up here, the spaciousness of the homes and the commanding views, very different than the life she knew.
She had a half-hour before checkout and she squeezed in one more hot tub session, along with some laps in the pool, and headed home to South 5th Street.
The fortunate thing, Marcus had an indoor soccer league he played in on Saturdays, and he’d mentioned that this week they were playing a tournament in Boise.
So that would occupy him most of the day. Which was good, because she frankly needed the time to figure out the best way to tell him it was over … And to brace for his reaction.
Dani turned the key and was alarmed to hear a college football game blasting out of the radio in the kitchen. She cautiously took one step into the apartment and waited, and then called his name. Marcus didn’t answer. The bedroom door was open she peaked in. The bed was made nice and neat, there were no clothes laying around, in fact the apartment overall looked cleaned up.
Dani put her keys down and laid her purse on the table and closed the front door. Thank God. Marcus had obviously just left radio on. Either by accident, or maybe for security, which wasn’t the worst thing, since he’d be gone all day and he didn’t know when I’d be back.
There was a muffled sound from down the hall, and for a moment Dani thought it was street noise reverberating through the apartment.
Then Marcus appeared coming out of the bathroom. He looked badly disheveled, like hadn’t slept, and was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and a tattered pair of long johns, and his feet were bare. He was holding a glass bottle of liquor in his left hand.
It took Dani a moment longer than it should have, since she was in a state of denial, to see that in his right hand he had a gun.
She knew a little bit about guns, having grown up with a dad and uncle who were avid outdoorsmen. Her dad was always trying to get her to come along, and occasionally she did. He taught her firearm safety and how to take a weapon apart and clean it.
Dani would think about this later, and would be surprised how calm she was as Marcus staggered along the hall toward her. It was interesting that she mentally took the time to identify the weapon. It looked like a Taurus 444. You typically used one for a backup, when you were hunting deep in bear territory. To a novice it would resemble a typical street handgun, but it was different.
As Marcus got closer he smiled at her, strange and extremely scary … At this moment, not remotely the person she knew.
She flashed on her dad once pulling a gun on her mom in the garage, when they were getting ready to go play Bingo. None of the three of them ever spoke about it, and her mom, as far as Dani could tell, woke up the next day and went about her and the family’s business like nothing had happened.
Marcus said, “Hiya Babe.”
For whatever reason, Dani focused on a drop kick as what might save her. It was a weird notion to have pop into her head. It seemed like wrestling was always on in the house when she was growing up. It was fake obviously, her dad was always pointing that out and laughing about it, but there were good athletes in it and some of the moves were amazing.
There was one wrestler she particularly enjoyed, partly because he was dark-skinned but had a long blond mane, and she had a bit of crush on him. Eeson ‘De-Tox’ Alexander. His signature move was the drop kick, where he’d fly up into the air, deliver the blow and then land on his back. The blow always either won the bout outright, or at least turned it around from when it looked completely bleak for De-Tox.
Marcus was about eight feet away, waving the gun casually. He said, “What? … I said to you, ‘Hi Babe’ … Don’t believe I heard you answer me.” His upper lip started to curl back.
Dani visualized it for a split second, felt she had it, and leapt toward him, bringing both legs to her chest and then thrusting them forward in an explosion of power and fury. Something else she dwelled on later, when she thought back on it, the amused look on Marcus’s face right up to the moment of contact, like was watching a circus act.
On impact, Dani could feel her feet rip into his chest, tearing through the skin, shattering the ribs and crushing his organs.
She remembered later thinking she should have been surprised, but that she wasn’t.
Marcus flew into the south living room wall and stayed there. He was a couple feet off the ground. He had obliterated the sheet rock. The wall studs were exposed, except instead of being the normal 16 inches apart one was missing. That was where Marcus was wedged in, between two studs with the center one knocked out.
Amazingly Marcus hadn’t dropped the gun. It occurred to Dani he must have had his finger wrapped around the trigger guard and it somehow stayed in place.
There was a knock on the door. Dani knew she couldn’t not answer it.
The kid from the apartment next door was standing there, nice guy, college student. Dani was pretty sure the kid had heard Marcus and her arguing a few times when it got heated, which probably woke him up once or twice, but he was diplomatic enough to let it go and never say anything.
Someone else, a woman Dani didn’t recognize, appeared as well, with her dog, asking if everything was okay. She was probably just walking down the block. Dani supposed it must have been pretty loud.
Dani didn’t let them in, but asked them please call an ambulance, and not panic, but that she injured her boyfriend very badly and is afraid she may have killed him.
The kid and the dog woman got out of there fast, and Dani called 911 as well, in case they hadn’t. She left her door open, considered turning off the radio where the announcer was still yelling out the play-by-play of the game, but decided to leave it alone, and she sat down at the kitchen table and waited. What else could you do?
Two uniform guys came in with guns drawn and handcuffed her and sat her on the floor against the couch. After a while two detectives showed up and they took the cuffs off.
Marcus was DOA, they way they kept putting it, and the police sent away the ambulance, and a crew with Forensics on the backs of their shirts came in and tried to go to work. It wasn’t easy, Marcus wedged up and in there in the awkward position, and Dani couldn’t help wondering if it might be at all tricky to extricate him.
Pretty soon the detectives’ questions were coming at her from all angles, and she responded as best she could. He was moving toward me with the gun, and … with a burst of adrenaline I suppose … I reacted and kicked him backwards.
There was a mean detective and a friendly one, which was how Dani was pretty sure it worked. “Unh-huh,” the mean one said. “And stuck him in the wall then … You’re a prett
y hot lady, you don’t mind my saying. Plenty feminine and all.
The friendly one cleared his throat. “Ma’am, what Buzz is getting at—We’re wondering, doesn’t what you’re saying happened, seem out of character? I mean, if you were us, wouldn’t you think so?”
“It was an abusive relationship,” Dani said, keeping it frank. “I’d finally made my mind up that yes I had the strength to break up with him.”
“Way it looks, that ain’t the only strength you had,” the mean one said.
“All’s we’re saying,” the nice one said, “you had to have some help here. Will you at least grant us that?”
Putting on his best Sunday smile. “I mean let’s all use a modicum of common sense,” he said, motioning his head toward Marcus, but neither of them glancing over there. Dani sensed that even these veteran detectives were cringing slightly at the view.
“I can understand your impression,” she said. “But as I’ve been telling you, I surprised myself as well … Again, all I can chalk it up to, is a massive survival surge. Where I feared for my life … I’m not sure what else I can give you.”
The detectives conferred privately for a minute and then the nice one said she’d have to come to the the station with them, no handcuffs, no charges, but to please cooperate.
Riding in the back of their black sedan, unmarked, Dani wondered did she actually need a lawyer. And if so, who would she call?
But at the police station everything seemed casual, they asked her what she wanted to drink, and she said coffee please, though what they brought her had been sitting for a while.
They ushered her into a room with a long table and a leather couch, that didn’t feel like an interrogation room, and they had her fill out some paperwork, which to Dani appeared boilerplate and routine. Essentially she was making a police report.
Then another detective, or maybe the chief one, who knows, came in and asked her the questions the other two had asked, but he spun them slightly differently.
At this point Dani suspected they were trying to trip her up, get her to change something in her story, and she politely declined to answer any more questions. An hour later they let her go, and a uniform cop drove her home.