“You pathetic little bitch!” The cashier kicked Rayne in the side of the head, her shoe skidding past Rayne’s ear, stopping at Rayne’s bony shoulder. “You think you can outsmart me? You?”
Across the floor by the refreshment counter, Rayne spotted a poster of a condemned prisoner sitting in a cell with a priest. Suddenly every lobby poster siphoned her spirits. Behind her, a door clicked open. Cool air swept inside, making her scalp tingle.
The cashier’s eyes flicked to the side. Her shoulders hunched. A guitar whiplashed into view. The wood body sliced through the air with the fluid ease of a tennis racket and made contact with the cashier’s right ear. The tire iron fell from her grip. Her legs buckled as she dropped to the floor. A trickle of blood appeared at the edge of the paisley scarf.
A masked woman moved into Rayne’s field of vision, a chic combination of gas mask and purple headband.
“Jimi Hendrix is my idol,” Shay said, kneeling by Rayne. Her voice sounded muffled behind the protective filter. “I’ve always wanted to set my guitar on fire, or smash it into an amp. Just bust it. Tonight I got my chance.”
“Thank…” Rayne croaked, “you.”
“Hanging out with you, Rayne, is fun and freaky—and expensive. But hey, like they say, ‘If you want to play, you got to pay.’ Can I keep your mask?”
“Sure,” Rayne croaked. She reached for the cashier’s head, and snapped off the silk scarf, revealing an explosion of dark red hair cut in a pageboy, a maroon helmet covering skin as smooth and white as a porcelain toilet bowl. Rayne handed the scarf to Shay. Her voice sounded slightly better when she said, “Souvenir.”
“Thank you, I love souvies.” Shay tucked it into her jacket’s pocket, then put her arm across Rayne’s shoulders. “Can you get up?”
Rayne nodded. Her breath returned, as if she’d been swimming underwater. She rose and hugged Shay. “You’re a lifesaver.”
Shay held the broken guitar by the neck, the steel strings resembled a big bug’s antennae. “I think it’s out of tune.”
“I’ll buy you a new one. Promise.”
“Promise me you’ll get out of here. You’ve done enough ass-whipping for one day.”
“Soon. But you gotta go. You can’t get arrested for assault.”
“I’m in disguise. No witnesses. They’ll never catch me.”
“Go.”
“Rayne…”
“Go, go, go.” Rayne picked up the tire iron and headed toward the left door of the viewing room. “I’ll be back. Now get out, before a crowd shows up outside.”
The noise hit her when she opened the inner door, a jackhammer to the ears. The dark room was nearly full, the sound system cranked up. Pure thunder and lightning. When the door whispered shut, her world was reduced to flickering shadows and a rectangular screen. She stood at the edge of a dark room filled with strangers. Presumably from this world. Then again, who knew?
The atmosphere was tense, the air electric. She recalled one of her favorite all-time films, the 1931 Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff. She flashed on Castle Frankenstein, the monster on the elevated gurney, getting his batteries jumped during the electrical storm. That was the scene that came to mind. Here, now. People were on their feet, some stood on their seats, their eyes riveted to the screen—worshippers at a tent revival, entranced by the coming attractions. Minister Rayne Moore was ready to deliver the sermon from the Book of Drones.
Rayne joined the congregation. She tightened her grip on the cool metal of the tire iron and hustled down the aisle, left side of the theater, her feet steady on the rubber runner while moving through light and shadow. What she saw on the screen clenched her heart: a shot of a narrow alley at night. A man was racing through a walled corridor, advancing toward the audience, and appeared ready to jump through the screen, into the crowd. Not far behind him, a mob gave chase. Shouts and gunshots echoed in the alley, loud as thunder.
This was unexpected. Her plan was to jam open the exit door with the tire iron. With a car parked partly inside a ticket booth, and an unconscious woman on the lobby floor, the police would arrive soon. Rayne wanted to be chased, wanted the Cambridge police to run after her and right into the parallel world. They needed to see it firsthand. She needed witnesses. But now she scrapped her plans. Everything had accelerated. The jumper hunters were coming. Two worlds were about to collide. She and Tim would soon be exonerated.
Rayne stopped at the end of the aisle, glanced up at the EXIT sign, and hit the crash bar. She swung the door, and then jammed the tapered end of the tire iron above the door’s hinge, forcing it open. A mob was coming, a stampede of rage and anger. Their shouts grew louder, a riot of voices. In front of the pack, a lone man was sprinting her way. The prey. He’d either reach the door in another ten seconds or so, or reach the afterlife. Overhead, flying objects swooped down into the alley.
Inside the theater, the viewers were shouting at the screen. As if the movie wasn’t a movie. As if special effects had transcended to the next level.
The lone man on the screen shouted, “Cambridge Police! Leave that door open!” His eyes glistened with terror.
The mob was boiling over, filling the narrow corridor. A flash flood of angry people enlarged on the screen. Their faces took on definition.
Rayne recalled the famous warning: You can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. Tonight, she was tempted to shout, “Future.”
The future was coming. And the future was pissed.
It was time to get out before she got crushed. Rayne ducked back inside the theater, and felt something strike her between the shoulder blades. A moment later, small drones flew through the open door and entered the theater like a flock of birds.
The running man whipped through the door, yelling, “Police!”
The movie screen was filled with a mob. Screeching voices shook the sound system. Half the audience was already out of their seats, pouring into the aisles.
Rayne reached out and grabbed the policeman’s arm. “Now you see.”
He looked at her face, and his eyes brightened with a hint of recognition. “Who…are they?”
Before she could answer, the hunters began streaming through the exit door and into the Gateway.
Chaos.
Rayne was knocked down, rose, and was knocked down again. The Cambridge cop grabbed her by the collar of her pea coat, pulled her up.
“C’mon,” he said.
The two raced up the aisle, just ahead of the crowd. She saw tiny drones swooping through the dark theater, backlit by the movie screen. They charged into the lobby and rushed for the glass doors, throwing them open, and headed into the street. The chill air felt good against her skin, cooling the perspiration on her forehead. A crowd had already gathered outside, surrounding the crashed car.
“My boyfriend and I were set up,” she told the detective. “That’s not us on the video. Back in that world, there’s like….”
“Clones, duplicates, I know.” His face was pale, drawn, and his eyes seemed to be floating inside their sockets. “I saw…I think I saw…myself.”
She was about to tell him, I want my life back, when the doors flew open and people poured out from the lobby, filling the street. Small drones escaped outside and flew upward, fading into the night sky.
Rayne glanced at the stars and whispered, “What a freaking nightmare.”
She turned and saw the detective being swallowed by the expanding crowd. She wondered how many of these people were from the other side, stepping into this new yet familiar world, wondering where all the drones had gone. Would any of them see their own clone over here? The police would have to sort out the madness. Good luck. Immigration Services probably didn’t cover parallel worlds. She wondered if the real story would get out, or would authorities opt for a cover-up version to prevent widespread panic. Either way…
Not my problem.
She darted across the street to the front of the church, and was relieved that Shay and her broken guitar w
ere gone. Three more words came to mind:
Go, go, go.
She had to return to the hospital. The entrance to the subway was nearby, across from the taxi stand. She hesitated on which to take when she spotted a familiar face across the street. Major DeZasta stood at the edge of the crowd, staring right at her. In the streetlight, his dark eyes glistened with defiance. Then he pushed his way through the crowd and into the theater.
Rayne thought of Tim, and then she thought:
Oh no you don’t.
She followed, heading toward the Gateway. The crowd kept expanding, pushing and shoving. She wedged through a mass of bodies, feeling like a fish swimming upstream, and finally squeezed through a glass door. People jammed the lobby, but no sign of Major DeZasta.
She knew where he was heading. She dodged between people and whipped open the left door to the viewing room, seeing a half empty room. The lights were still low, the screen lit.
“DeZasta!” she shouted from the top of the aisle. “Major DeZasta!”
She jostled her way down the left aisle as if she were on a crowded subway train at rush hour, shouldering people out of the way. Buried beneath the noise of voices and feet, a metallic thudding sound could be heard. A crash bar. Roughly halfway down the narrow aisle, below the EXIT sign, she saw the metal door open, then bang shut.
Too late.
She realized that she had no plan to prevent his escape. She stood still in the aisle, getting bumped by people. What to do? Then Major DeZasta appeared again, defiant, staring directly at her.
She turned her eyes slightly to the right and stared at the movie screen, a live feed from the alley. DeZasta stood on the other side of the theater’s brick wall, a mere stone’s-throw away, and looked up into the hidden camera posted in the alley. Small and large drones flew like birds, swooping in and out of view above the dirty pavement. He faced her with a cold smile, and whispered a single word. A syllable. It sounded like ray or…rain.
The tone conveyed a promise, or maybe a threat.
Rayne peered at the large screen and watched DeZasta turn away and walk down the dark corridor. The view changed. A moon-white drone fell from the sky and appeared above him, shaped like an angel. The two moved in tandem. His guardian angel floated over a Dumpster and a row of garbage cans. The two faded into the night, moving toward a distant streetlamp and cemetery.
Fadeout.
End of movie.
For the first time, the EXIT sign flickered and turned off. She stared at the dark door at the bottom of the aisle. Did she really want to pass through that door one more time?
Rayne retraced her steps into the lobby, squeezing between people, and then exited the Gateway.
She buttoned her pea coat collar against an autumnal wind and brought Tim’s image to mind. She’d be back at the clinic within the hour. She looked up and scanned the sky, wondering if anything up there—some small, unseen object—at that very moment, was looking down at her, tracking each footstep. These days, who knew?
She thought, “Maybe I’m being seen by the unseen.” The very idea of it made her shiver as she clutched her collar. Tonight a touch of winter chilled the air. The cold season was coming, a chill seeped into her sleeves.
She walked up the street toward the subway entrance in Harvard Square. It was time to go underground.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Davidson is the author of three quirky thrillers, EXIT, THE MUSEUM OF SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCES (Jurassic Jim Fleetwood #1) and PAST IS PRESENT (Jurassic Jim Fleetwood #2), and a collection of humor, FRANKENSTEIN: SPERM DONOR DAREDEVIL. His nonfiction has appeared in The Boston Phoenix; and is excerpted in the national bestseller Missing Beauty by crime reporter, Teresa Carpenter. His comic fiction has appeared in MudRock: Stories and Tales and The American Drivel Review; crime fiction in A Twist of Noir, Powder Burn Flash, and All Things Crime Blog. His literary humor column appeared at The Electronic Drivel Review, ADR’s online supplement. His story, EXIT, won the San Francisco 2013 Litquake Booktrack Halloween Short Story Competition. He’s been tracked by surveillance cameras in the Boston area.
For more information about the author, please visit:
my website: www.thomas-davidson.com
my blog: http://jurassicjim.blogspot.com/
Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed EXIT, please leave a review on Amazon, even if it’s just a sentence or two. It would be very much appreciated.
http://www.amazon.com/Floaters-Thomas-Davidson-ebook/dp/B00LEYHG80/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404253555&sr=1-8&keywords=floaters
EXCERPT
THE MUSEUM OF
SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCES
If you enjoyed EXIT, and are in the mood for an offbeat thriller with humor and a 4/4 rock-n-roll beat (you can simultaneously read, dance, laugh and bite your fingernails), featuring the most retro man in America, then I invite you to the Museum.
THE MUSEUM OF SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCES is the first of two quirky thrillers featuring "Jurassic Jim" Fleetwood. This museum is not your typical museum and cannot be found on a map, but it preserves many treasures. This museum features mystery, music, mirth, melancholy, mayhem, murder and the missing. Here is the first chapter…
THE MUSEUM OF
SUDDEN
DISAPPEARANCES
a quirky thriller
Man is in love
And loves what vanishes;
What more is there to say?
— W.B. Yeats
Chapter 1
Friday, December 20, 1991
The deejay squeezed between two barflies and climbed over a red vinyl stool and onto the mahogany bar, standing up—a tower guard braced for a riot. If any yahoo warbled Frank Sinatra’s My Way, he’d throw tear-gas canisters into the crowd. Stun grenades were reserved for unauthorized brutes touching his turntable.
Across the packed barroom, a blue flame flashed in the air.
He saw a petite pyromaniac swagger up to the microphone stand with her shot glass on fire, leading two gorillas with goatees. The blond stopped under the spotlight in a biker jacket and red ra-ra skirt, hoisting the flaming sambuca like a torch over her spiky hair—and froze. The room shook with wolf whistles. But only her eyes moved, peeking at the deejay by the ceiling.
Jim Fleetwood stood high over a glassy-eyed mob armed with bottles and bad manners. He called through cupped hands, “And you are?”
She winced at Jim as if he were blind.
“I’m the Statue of Liberty!” she declared. “Gimme your tired, your poor? Is you crazy? Gimme your broke, worthless dudes with clue disabilities? Gimme your cheaters, your promise-breakers, your lazy-ass weasels yearning to drink free on my couch while I’m at a jay-oh-bee paying the bills? Are you shittin’ me, people?” The flaming shot jiggled overhead. “If I wanna hunky monkey with no money, honey, I’ll go to the zoo!”
Chairs rattled. Every woman in the barroom stood up and cheered.
If Liberty dropped the hot glass, Jim could watch his equipment go up in flames.
Liberty introduced her two backup singers with a flick of her thumb. “Them’s the muddled masses yearning to breathe free without payin’ the do-re-mi. That’s Gimme Jimmy and Gimme Timmy—the Gimme Boys. Newsflash: Sing for your supper, you pisspots!” Above the thunderous applause, she screeched, “Am I right?”
“If her glitter hairspray ignites,” Sidney the bartender said, looking up at the deejay, “it’ll set off the fire alarm. Your show will end with screams and a stampede. Come to think of it, half your record collection sends them screaming for the exit. Guess that’s why they call you Jurassic Jim, the dinosaur deejay.”
Jim sighed. Somewhere in a parallel universe, he merrily bludgeoned Sidney with a tip jar, then strangled him on a bartop to a standing ovation. “Your mama have two broken arms, couldn’t hug you as a child?”
Sidney started to speak, then pointed at heaven with his middle digit.
“By chance,” Jim called across the floor, “you got
a song? Or should I tomahawk a beer bottle through the air and snuff that fire?”
Liberty blew out the flame and knocked back the sambuca. She nodded at her two goons in snorkel jackets. “A love song.”
“I had a feeling.”
Each night was a roller coaster ride without a seat belt.
She gripped the chrome mic stand—Rock Star 101—her cheeks brightly rouged, and announced, “Blue Moon, 1991 style.”
“A classic from 1934.” Jim’s boot heel thumped the bar like a bass drum pedal. “You butcher ‘Blue Moon’ and you’ll rue the day you ever stumbled inside the Swizzle Stick without a helmet. This isn’t an audience, it’s a firing squad with glass missiles. You’ll never reach the parking lot alive. We clear, cadets?”
The three looked up at him—six-foot-three with shoulder-length hair the color of a saddle, and a horseshoe mustache—and giggled. “Clear!” they said.
Jim advanced a step along the bar. The drinks vanished by his feet as his gray snakeskin boots clicked on the wood. He turned to the trio, a finger in the air. “Hit it.”
“Forget romance, this is a war dance.” The elfin blond leaned back on the heel of her Doc Martens boot, waving her fist. “I want revenge!”
The trio froze, heads down. The gorillas pulled on their hoods with faux-fur trim. Liberty finger-snapped the count, “One…two…three…” Each rocked back on their left foot, and threw a right-hand punch. Then a bicep slap, a forearm jerk. Up yours!
As she sang lead, the gorillas sang backup inside their snorkel hoods, dancing in synchronized convulsions. King and Kong.
“Full Moon
you saw me stranded alone
With a scream in my heart
With a gun of my own…”
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