2 Minutes to Midnight

by Steve Lang

  “Wonderful!”

  Tim hoped his enthusiasm had not been too noticeable, but he felt a sexual attraction to Elsa and if a lurking husband or boyfriend were around he could toss those thoughts in the trash.

  “Ha ha, go sit in the living room while I get us a drink.” Elsa laughed.

  Tim sat on a dilapidated green couch. He was sitting there wondering what a girl as pretty as Elsa was doing in this run down tenement when he heard a muffled cry from the basement. The sound startled him as Elsa entered the room.

  “Daddy’s helping our dog, Jeeter. The poor thing had his leg broken today when a car hit him on the highway.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame. Poor thing, I had a dog as a kid. Rascal was his name, and I loved that little guy.” Tim said.

  “Yes, well we do try to help those we love.” Elsa said.

  She took a seat on the couch next to Tim curling her legs up next to his and handed him a glass of tea.

  “I made this fresh, today.” She smiled.

  Her physical proximity, combined with the aroma of strawberries made Tim feel like he was in another world. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted her to want him to do it, but as he swallowed hard he could not get the courage to make a move. Her milky white, soft skin drove him crazy and the temptation to throw caution to the wind overpowered him. To hell with it, he thought. Tim leaned in for a kiss, and she reciprocated.

  “I’m sorry; I don’t know why I just did that.” Tim apologized.

  “Don’t apologize for following your base sexual desires, Tim Tucker. You want to be a naughty boy, don’t you?”

  Tim felt blood rush to his head. No woman had ever said anything like that to him, and he began to feel the familiar throbbing need as she moved her hand to his crotch. Gently, she massaged him.

  “Drink your tea. You look parched.” Elsa said.

  She leaned in, kissed him lightly on the ear, and bit his earlobe with gentle, playful pressure. He was her puppet now, and all thought that her daddy was somewhere in the house, forgotten. He drank her tea, and felt the sweet liquid cool him as he swallowed. He thought Elsa must have used a bad tea bag, because although the tea was delicious, there was an acrid aftertaste, like aspirin had been mixed with it. Elsa undid a few more of the buttons on her shirt, one at a time, in a strip tease that was making Tim insane. Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead and he began to feel a wave of nausea as she took one of his hands and placed it inside her large bra.

  “This is what you want, naughty boy?” Elsa whispered.

  “Yes.” Tim said.

  He kissed her on the lips, and as she opened her mouth he noticed that her breath smelled like rotten eggs. Had she brushed her teeth this year? He didn’t care, Tim pushed past as his head began to swim, and the nausea grew. He could feel the soft flesh of her right breast against his hand as he kneaded and gently squeezed. She moaned a little, smiling at him as his vision began to waver and fade.

  “Tim, you’re going to miss the best part. Don’t go to sleep yet.” Elsa said.

  Elsa had a little girl frown on her face that, had Tim not been on his way out of consciousness, would have been a real turn on. Elsa opened her shirt the rest of the way and lifted her bra to display a very perky and well-rounded set of double D breasts. She smiled at him as he flashed a stupid grin and his head hit the back of the couch. Tim never did get to enjoy the rest of his show, and everything went to black.

  Sometime later Tim woke up in a dark room tied to a bed. His head was slamming as if an orchestral drum section were playing hard inside his skull. Terror stole reason as he realized his predicament and attempted, in vain, to release his hands from the ties that bound him. Tears of fear, confusion and frustration rolled down his face. Where had Elsa gone, and why was he tied to a bed?

  “Hello, is someone there? Please untie me. I’ll leave, I meant no harm.” Tim cried.

  Someone approached from the front of the bed, a dark figure moving with the speed of a phantom, and cut one of the ties. This figure said nothing to him, and walked out the bedroom door into a dark hallway beyond. Tim looked down and could make out the shape of a knife, the knife used to cut one arm loose. But why was he cut free? His eyes were adjusted to the black, and in the right corner of this room he could see a dresser, a rocking chair, and a figure sitting stone still as the chair rocked forward and back. A humming and clicking sound rose from the rocking chair corner and scared as he was; Tim quickly took the knife and cut his other hand free.

  Tim got off the bed and stumbled over to the door where he found a light switch. He flipped on the light and turned to see that a horror show sat in the chair. Tim’s father introduced had him to carnival clowns at the early age of five, when the circus came to town each year. Not only did he not understand them, but he was frightened of them. Human faces masked by pancake makeup, black ringed eyes, ubiquitous beeping red noses, and sinister grins searching his face for an expression. Or, the prostrate, sad, downward looking clowns, the ones life had bitten a chunk out of that, to Tim, begged for help, or some form of humanity from the crowds they presented themselves to. They wore their pain on the outside, and the experience had been quite affecting. In the corner of this strange room Tim was face to face with the boogey man once again. He stood eyes wide, heart palpitating, mind racing at an elderly man dressed in a clown suit. He was covered in blood and rocked back and forth staring at Tim with eyes of glass two times too big for his sockets. They bulged with insanity. Some mad scientist had stitched his cheeks back in a grotesque grin of horror. His throat had been sliced from ear to ear and stitched back together in a crude pattern reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster. A large red wig sat cockeyed on his head. The pièce de résistance was a red rubber nose covering what may have been a nose beneath.

  “Oh my God. This can’t be real!” Tim croaked.

  In response the man turned his head, opened his mouth, and emitted a squeak like that of a child’s rubber bath toy. Had his vocal chords been replaced? Tim thought in misery. The horror show clown leapt up with suddenness, and began feeling around in the air with his hands outstretched, croaking, gurgling, and squeaking. Tim still had the knife in his hand, and as the clown horror shambled toward the sound of his voice he instinctively drove the knife blade deep into this man’s chest. As the clown dropped dead, the door to his room slammed open and a tall man dressed in overalls, and wearing someone’s face as a mask stood staring at Tim. Tim could see two smoldering eyes glaring back at him from behind the mask.

  “That was my favorite artwork! AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!” The man screamed.

  Tim felt his vision begin to waver as blood rushed from his head. In shock of what he had just witnessed, he almost passed out. His mental state had reached the point just past terror and now floated somewhere in a protective vacuum, struggling to keep him sane. As quick as the man had come he was gone. He took off, running down the dark hall and screaming obscenities.

  Elsa walked in a moment later. She had a twisted grin on her face.

  “Forgive daddy, he was a surgeon during the war and has not been the same since. Did you like his clown? He worked very hard on that one while you were in our living room.” Elsa showed Tim a driver’s license, and nodded toward the clown.

  “This man was selling rubber boot covers.” She frowned, playfully.

  “Can I go home now?” Tim begged.

  “I thought you wanted to be a naughty boy, Timmy?” Elsa purred.

  “I just want to go home. I don’t want to play your game anymore.” Tim said.

  The shock had sent Tim into a fight or flight state and when he looked down his hand was still holding the blood covered knife. He looked back up at Elsa, rage illuminating his eyes.

  “Oh bad boy, Timmy! I know what you’re thiiinking.” She sang. “Ha, ha, ha!” Her voice had taken on a slight German accent, which caused Tim to wonder which side her daddy had been on in the war.

  The lights went out again, and Tim found himself inside an odd worl
d of darkness. If he had died and gone to Hell, somehow, this would explain what was happening. With two confirmed mad people in the house and a dead clown at his feet, Tim had had enough and walked out of the bedroom prison. Elsa was toying with him now, and he expected her daddy to pop out and stab him at any moment. Tim entered the hallway and a light flickered on overhead, while Blue Danube began playing downstairs. Lining the walls were severed heads of humans nailed to rough cut plywood boards. Beneath them, centered with care was the driver’s license of each victim. They were all men. Tim tried to swallow, but he had the cottonmouth of fear, and nothing went down.

  “We get sooo many visitors, Timmy. This is good because father likes to entertain.” Elsa said.

  Tim turned and she was behind him at the end of the upstairs hallway.

  “Just let me go, and I won’t tell anyone about this place.” Tim said.

  “Oh, we know you won’t. You simply must stay awhile, though Timmy. Forever is such a small amount of time.” Elsa chimed.

  Elsa vanished behind another door, but Tim was on an overlook, and spotted the front door of the house at the base of the stairs. He walked to the staircase, and looked down. No one was there. He carefully began to creep down, still gripping the knife with white knuckles. Just as the lights went out again, he tripped on a raised nail. He was sent sprawling to the floor below. Tim’s vision was filled with stars, and in the fall he had knocked out a tooth. A blossom of pain exploded in his right jaw as exposed nerve endings met with air. Tim raced for the door and was repelled backward as something smashed him in the face. The blow was not hard enough to knock him out but in his daze he became confused and ran for the door again, not realizing that he was headed for the basement. Tim threw the door open and ran down the stairs, only realizing his mistake when he saw the twin operating tables under flickering fluorescent lights.

  Tim held the knife in his hand with a death grip as sweat poured down his face, mixing with caked blood.

  “Ever since you Americans shut down my father’s laboratory in Berlin he has not been the same. We were so close to understanding the human brain. But now we have to work in secret!” Elsa screamed.

  She was standing at the door frowning down at Tim as she closed and locked it. Tim was trapped in the basement, alone, frightened, and angry. Where was her father?

  “Hello? Is anyone down here?” Tim shouted.

  He held the knife before him like a cross; waiting for his Dracula would pop out of the shadows. Not a sound was heard as Tim snuck across the dirty floor, searching for another way out, and hoping he would not run into the man wearing the human facemask again. Along one wall sat a freezer, and when he opened it there were human arms and legs carefully wrapped in plastic, perfectly preserved.

  “Guess I should have seen that one coming.”

  Aside from the freezer, the basement was clean and looked like any normal hospital operating room. Tim noticed a gigantic Nazi flag pinned to the wall.

  “Nazi’s. Perfect. I’m trapped by a mad scientist with sour grapes.” Tim said.

  Tim turned a corner and entered another room in the basement with meat hooks hanging from the ceiling in rows. A number of corpses hung by hooks in their backs. They were stinking, rotting, and staring with dead eyes at Tim as he backed right into Elsa’s father. Tim felt warm fluid trickle down his pants as he wet himself. The man removed his mask, revealing a very handsome, if not disheveled young man in his early thirties. The man was staring at Tim with a mixture of pity and compassion.

  “You’ve gone and vet yourselve!” He said.

  “What do you want with me?” Tim said.

  “It’s my daughter Elsa… she’s crazy, friend. She made me wear this mask. It was her mother’s, you know.”

  “Her mother’s mask?” Tim asked.

  Tim was certain he did not want to answer to that question, but it had been a particularly strange night.

  “No, her face. My name is Dieter, and although I would like to let you go we really must get you on the operating table. Look at it this way, you’re helping to further the cause of an Aryan race, and it will be over so fast.” Dieter said.

  Tim’s limbic instinct kicked in and he plunged his knife into Dieter’s chest. The man looked at him with wide eyes and began laughing hysterically before slumping to the floor dead.

  “Father! Are you alright?” Elsa said from above.

  Tim heard the door open and he charged toward Elsa, running up the steps and knocking her over. Tim ran for the door screaming bloody murder as Elsa stood and followed him.

  “Wait, Timmy, don’t leave! You have to stay with us…forever!” Elsa screamed.

  Tim ran out into the pouring rain and slipped on the last step. His knife flew through the air stabbing the mud as it landed, and he was knocked unconscious again. When he next woke, Tim was lying in the back seat of his car covered in mud, and blood, and he did not know how he got there. Aching tendrils of pain climbed up his back from the fall he took on that last stair, but the sun was up, and all the rain clouds had disappeared. It was a brand new day, and somehow he had survived the night. He got out of the car with the fragility of a senior citizen stepping from a sidewalk, and felt for his wallet, and car keys. They were both missing, and where was his briefcase with the soap samples?

  The farmhouse glared at Tim like a stalker, but he had no choice but find his belongings. Flies buzzed noisily around his face as Tim walked back toward the house, a place that would be a source of nightmares for years to come. Locust cries broke the silence as his temperature rose with the morning heat. The mud that was caked on his face began to weigh heavily, and he brushed it off. Tim’s shoes sucked in and out of mud along the rutted dirt road. His eyes were trained on the house, consumed by a supernatural pull. Had he imagined the entire event, or was Elsa in there watching, waiting for him to return? Would she finish the job and steal his brain? He began to scan the ground for his keys and wallet, but he had no luck. When Tim reached the house he realized the front door was lying broken on the ground, all of the windows smashed in long ago during some great fire, and tall weeds had grown through broken floorboards on the porch. It looked nothing like the night before.

  Warped and burned steps and floorboards creaked under his weight as Tim’s fear mixed with confusion once more. No one had been home for a very long time, and Elsa was certainly not there. Tim walked with extreme care to avoid falling through the decaying floor. He had seen enough of the basement last night and falling into it breaking a leg with no one to help him would not be ideal. His briefcase sat in the hall with a sheet of paper attached to it, and on top were his keys and wallet. Tim picked up the paper with trembling hands, and it read:

  I had a great time last night! Stop back

  anytime after dark, lover.

  Yours forever,

  Elsa

  Tim put his keys and wallet back in his pocket, picked up his briefcase, and walked off down the muddy, rutted dirt road. His car started with one turn of the key, and before he set her back on the road Tim could swear he saw a young blond woman standing on the porch, waving goodbye. Tim shot a tentative wave back, counted his lucky stars, and never drove Route 49 again.

  the petrified man

  Two men constructing a tunnel find an amazing artifact that changes their lives forever.

  In the fall of 2111, the great state of West Virginia decided that a new road was necessary to connect the towns of Meadow Creek and Lockbridge. Although a smaller road was previously established long ago to allow travel between the two towns, this highway would save everyone ten minutes of drive time. The main obstacle preventing completion of said project was the presence of Hump Mountain, a monstrous obstacle standing in the way of manifest destiny. Although the project had been rejected by both towns in a majority vote, powerful people with money wanted this road built, and so it was happening, like it, or not. Adding insult to injury, those in favor of this project would tunnel through the mountain at the expense of Wes
t Virginia’s tax payers.

  Jim Dolan, of Duncan Tunnel Works, had been setting up the site for the tunnel project with his partner Dean Stockman. The tunnel-bot, Gordon, should be arriving any minute, and as he bore a tunnel through the mountain, Jim and Dean would clean up the dirt and debris.

  “It’s a damned shame that the ‘bot’s gonna’ be here to drill the hole and we have to pick up after him,” said Dean.

  “Bots move faster, dude. At least we don’t have to place charges as much anymore. That’s dangerous work.” Jim replied, and Dean nodded in admittance.

  From half a mile away they could hear the stomping, clanging, and banging sound of the bot Gordon approaching for duty. As he came into view the six ton robot’s single red eye roved left and right like a sentinel beacon. He stood ten feet tall, and was constructed with a round body, ending in a shiny, chrome, cone dome for a head. Gordon’s knees and feet had been fitted with tank track on his sides. This mobility enhancement allowed the giant robot to roll along with ease as he used the cutters on his arms to tear through rocks and dirt. His torso was also fitted with a laser drill for tough spots. Gordon was perfect for drilling the pilot tunnel, and a much larger bot would be along to cut the main route, if the tunnel did not cave in.

  “Hi guys!” Gordon waved.

  “Gordon, we could hear coming you from a mile away, buddy. You’re not quiet, are you?” Jim said.

  “Yeah. Why don’t you use the tank tracks on your legs to roll instead of stomping around like an ape?” Dean said.

  “Last time I did that on the asphalt I got yelled at for tearing up the road by Foreman Spangler. Besides boys, I like to make an entrance.” Gordon said. The two men gave a chuckle, shaking their heads.

  “You’re a funny guy, Gordon. Well, the site’s right over there if you want to get started.” Jim said. Gordon saluted the men and stomped over to the mountainside.