* * *
The mechanic shop smelled of grease and oil and made the doctor wish he’d brought a pair of old tennis shoes instead of his good dress shoes. He was dressed in black from head to toe, sporting a long trench coat and leather driving gloves. The late night shadows enveloped his body and made him invisible to any eyes that should befall the garage. The night was quiet though, and the doctor knew that Peggy Sue would be keeping Ted busy and away from the repair shop, especially this late on a Friday night.
The doctor found the coffee maker in the small office, which was near the back entrance. With a gloved hand, he carefully removed the coffee pot from the machine and lifted the plastic cover with his index finger and thumb, placing the clear glass pot on the small wooden desk where the machine sat. He reached into his trench coat pocket, digging deep until he felt the vial with his gloved fingers. The small vial held the perfect quantity of the liquid anaesthesia for the purpose of this visit.
A sudden resonating echo from outside made the doctor jump and nearly drop the vial to the concrete floor. Just a set of wind chimes blowing harmlessly in the evening breeze outside the open office window. The wind chimes had helped shift his attention to what he was doing. His every move calculated and focused upon with even greater care and measure. Like the chimes, his mind resonated now with the task at hand.
He removed the metal and plastic cap and the rubber stopper of the vial, allowing the few millilitres of the clear liquid to splash into the bottom of the empty coffee pot. He put the pot back in its place, ensuring the handle to be exactly at the same angle as it had been when he’d removed it, knowing that any small change in regularity could mean the end of his plan. He stared at the button on the coffee maker, the one indicating the automatic timer was set to the ON position. His eyes fixated upon the dial, gazing into it as though it was a crystal ball, an electronic foreseer of the events that were to unfold in the following hours.
For a few seconds, his thoughts clouded, he became confused and questioned how in the world he could bring himself to perform such atrocities onto a man he hardly knew. Then he remembered Peggy Sue. Her casual conversations about how she’d spent the evening reading at home in bed, when in fact he had seen her car parked next to Ted’s at the lookout point several nights in a row.
He stiffened his lips, and after a brief inspection that everything was in its place on the desk again, he dropped the empty vial and the rubber seal into his coat pocket, before heading out the back door again.
It was now three forty-four am. His car was parked further down the yard, near the junked vehicles, where it blended well. Unless Ted was to walk over to the very far end of the yard, the Cadillac would remain unseen. Dr. Edwards stood standing at the back entrance of the repair shop, closed the door again and locked it. He backed away from the door, until he disappeared in the shadows of the large oak trees that surrounded the property. He stood deep within the hanging leaves, until his face was immersed with the darkness that surrounded him.
Time was but a factor in the process. He would wait until sunrise, when Ted would arrive, on time, every day, as had been his routine all week. The wind chimes fluttered against each other once more as the doctor replayed the scenes of passion between the two lovers he had now grown to despise.
* * *
The orange and crimson glow reached the far corners of the repair shop as Ted arrived bright and early, as per his usual routine. The tranquility of the morning, that first ray peering over the horizon, was what Ted loved most about being up and about so early. It seemed as though nothing else in the world mattered when he set his eyes upon the majestic sunrise every morning.
The quiet transferred into his shop, slipping in through the unlocked door and stepped over the threshold. He hung his keys up on the small plaque that had several rows of hooks for cars that were in for repair. He walked over to the coat rack that stood in the far right hand corner of the small office space, and there he hung his Boston Bruins baseball cap, and the down vest he wore on this cool morning. He walked over to his desk, sat down on his old office chair that squeaked when he rolled it closer to his workspace.
Picking up the coffee mug that was sitting on the corner of the desk, he blew into it to clean out any potential dust in the dirty mug and poured a fresh cup of piping hot black coffee. He went about his morning routine, and eventually moved out into the shop where he started work on the transmission that eagerly waited for his large hands to rebuild. After only a few moments of finishing his coffee, Ted started to feel light headed and a bit confused. He was under the hoist, and every movement he made took a great deal of effort on his part.
His tools dropped beside him as he fell onto his back under the car. He put both hands on his chest, struggling to keep his eyes open; he wondered what was happening to him. Just as his eyes began closing of their own accord, he heard the back door open and then close. He managed to turn his head in that direction. His eyes closed briefly, then reopened several seconds later. Even blinking now took effort. He was surprised to see two feet stepping forward from the back of the shop and in his direction. This was the last thing Ted saw before everything went dark that morning. The next time Ted would open his eyes he would wish he never would have been able to see the evil that manifested itself before him.
* * *
Richard approached the hoisted car with a slow and deliberate quietness in his step. He had watched Ted drink his coffee from the side window of the shop, but there was no real way of knowing that the drug had knocked his wife’s lover unconscious or not. He had roughly calculated Ted’s weight, the liquid’s potential evaporation and the amount of drug he had ingested and concluded that ten minutes would have been sufficient to send him off to dreamland. He stood at the threshold of the back door of the shop for several minutes, watching and waiting for Ted to stop moving.
He began to re-consider his plan and just dropping the car onto Ted, making it look like an accident. But doing this might chance Ted’s possible survival and subsequent ability to recount how his morning had been routine. They might eventually test his blood for drugs, dead or alive, and would somehow find a connection. He decided this last minute plan was too risky and so he’d go through with his original idea.
Once Richard was certain that Ted would not get up and perch over him like one of those carnival stilt-walkers, he stepped in the shop and closed the door behind him. Now standing over Ted, his useless body but a bag of muscles and meat, he smirked as he bent down to his knees. His nose filled with the smell of the greasy rag that had fallen onto the floor nearby. Ted’s arms sprawled out on each side now, his head rested lazily alongside his right shoulder on the cold, grease-stained cement floor. Dr. Edwards poked a few gloved fingers into Ted’s right arm. No response. He pushed harder now, making the unconscious body move back and forth with each small shove his hand served.
Satisfied with the potency of the drug and Ted’s apparent state of forced slumber, Dr. Edwards pulled the body across the shop floor, dragging him by his size twelve feet. Using Ted’s mechanics dolly, he managed to bring him outside, and after a good struggle, he managed to get him inside the trunk of his new 1981 Cadillac.
He returned to the shop, making sure to take with him all the evidence that would possibly serve as proof that foul play was amiss. Rinsing out the coffee pot first, and putting it back in its place and then he gathered the mug and the grinds into a bucket and stuffed these, as well as the unconscious body into his trunk. Just as he was about to close the trunk, he heard the sound of a car engine approaching. A car had turned from the main road and was en route to the shop, making its way through the winding tree-lined driveway. He closed the trunk, and hurried behind the wheel. The Cadillac started with a slick turn of the ignition key, and purred idly as the Doctor sat waiting to see if the approaching vehicle would cause an unforeseen problem. He rolled down his window to listen.
The driver par
ked the car in the front lot and cut the engine. The Doctor waited a few seconds, then slowly inched the Cadillac from the back of the building over to the front. From there, the driveway was but a few yards long before his car would be hidden by the thick and lush green leaves that were the oak trees. As soon as he rounded the corner, he recognized Peggy Sue’s Lincoln parked in front of the shop. She had no doubt gone inside already as she was nowhere to be seen. Richard did not waste time. Without looking back, his gloved fingers curled around his large steering wheel, his eyes staring straight ahead, he felt a renewed desire to complete the task at hand. The Cadillac disappeared behind the oaks.
* * *
Ted could hear waves crashing on the shore. Though his head throbbed with a dull ache, his hearing was the first of his senses to come back to him. The wind rushed in through an open window, mixing with the sounds of the coastline. Seagulls cried as the waves crashed abruptly against the not so distant cliff. Normal seaside sounds that any resident of Oakwood Island had grown accustomed to hearing. It was the rustling of a plastic bag and the humming of someone else in the room with him that startled Ted’s eyes into awareness.
Still feeling groggy, he managed to open his eyes with some effort. The room seemed to spin a few times above him. The pod lights overhead shone down, with three of them pointing straight at him. The lights on the ceiling, though dim, felt bright and were stinging his pupils. Once they adjusted, he recognized he was in Peggy Sue’s cabin off Ocean’s Edge Road. She had brought him here a few times since their fling had started. His mind began trying to recall how he’d come here. He finally realized that he was sprawled out naked on the counter top of the kitchen island. The tier-racked pod lights were casting a glow directly over the spot where he’d once taken Peggy Sue in a lust-filled moment of passion.
He tried to bring himself up, but his body did not budge. He couldn’t move at all. His limbs were like dead weights and would not respond to his mind’s requests. In the few moments he’d awoken, he had tried to piece together how he’d come to be here, but nothing came to him. The clatter of steel against steel made Ted snap his tired eyes open at once in fright. His head began throbbing, he felt groggy but also alarmed. His head was spinning, but he managed to look around and saw a man standing at the kitchen sink just a few feet away.
He realized with horror the man was Doctor Edwards. This was also his cabin too, after all, not only Peggy Sue’s. He soon understood that the severity of his predicament was much greater than he had originally thought. The sound of plastic he’d heard had been rustling within the Doctor’s hands. As the doctor worked, he hummed a song, a familiar one, but Ted could not pinpoint the tune, his mind rushing with questions while still struggling with the effects of the drug.
The doctor moved something fairly large and struggled to get it inside a green plastic bag. After a few moments, he managed to tie the bag closed, sealing its contents. Ted watched, curious and confused. He could not make any sense of this at all. No sense, that is until the doctor lifted the bag and its heavy contents and plopped it on the kitchen floor next to him. Ted gasped as he recognized his own tattoo from within the green transparent plastic bag. The tattoo of the dragon that had wrapped around his leg since his late teen years. The dragon, now trapped in a green prison, its blood, Ted’s blood, pooling in the corners of the bag on the floor.
The doctor turned when he heard Ted’s gasp, just in time to see him look down in horror at the bloody stump where once had been the home of a brave dragon. Outside, gulls shrieked as Ted’s scream carried out over the sea, while Doctor Edward’s hands carefully extracted a small surgical saw from a tool kit that was sitting on the counter near the sink. When Ted passed out again, his last thought was of Peggy Sue’s red hair, flowing wildly in the night wind, her beautiful face smiling back at him. It was the last conscious thought Ted Bryerson would hold.
* * *
The table was set for Sunday morning breakfast as it had always been since their first morning together as husband and wife. Richard and Peggy Sue sat across from each other at their long, rectangular dining room table. On the white tablecloth, with its eloquent antique detailing of lace and silken embroidery, stood a basket of fresh pastries and muffins, a carafe of orange juice and an overflowing fruit basket. Peggy Sue kept her left hand in her lap while her right hand stiffly held the heavy fork. She brought the creamy eggs Benedict to her mouth, tasting nothing but the same of everything else she’d tried to eat since the previous weekend. She had been surprised to find the repair shop empty upon her early Saturday morning visit.
She had been visiting Ted every morning since they had first started seeing each other. The shop had been empty, and she had assumed something had come up and shrugged it off. The eggs were mushy on her tongue and made her feel like she might be sick. Her constant thoughts of Ted running off without her, without even a whisper of a warning, made her heart cry and her head pound with confusion and pain. She had been an emotional wreck all week. Across the table, Richard reached for the carafe, the bright orange matching the shade of his sunny disposition this morning. It seemed he had been increasingly happy over the past week, and this morning, Peggy Sue brought an even, but quite opposite, sour mood to the table.
“Would you like me to pour you a glass of citrus sunshine, love?”
Peggy Sue recoiled at her husband’s affection. Her right hand waved her fork in a no motion as she swallowed her bite of eggs.
“No thanks. I’m good,” she replied dryly, her eyes fixing themselves on the yellow and white globs on her plate. She put down her fork, let a soft sigh escape through her lips and brought up her cup of black coffee. She sipped at the hot drink, unsure if she really wanted to drink the caffeinated liquid. She wanted to just crawl back into bed and cry until the tears lulled her to sleep again. She knew she wouldn’t though, knowing that her husband’s faithful stare was watching her every move and her every breath from where he sat, directly across her.
She looked up, letting her gaze first fall upon the fresh bouquet of calla lilies, her eyes then moved on to the happy and annoying pug of a man that she called her husband. She felt a deep sense of resentment towards him now, his grin wide as he chewed his bagel, his eyes peering at her over his small and round glasses. She picked up the napkin in her lap, dabbed at the corners of her mouth and placed it across her lap again. She dropped her shoulders against the high back chair and brought her cup of coffee near her chest, holding it with her right hand. She crossed her left arm across her abdomen as she sipped the coffee slowly.
As Richard broke off a smaller piece of his cinnamon-raisin bagel and spread cream cheese over the small morsel, he couldn’t help but smile as he saw how miserable his wife was without her lover. The fact that he had been able to take matters into his own small, yet powerful hands made the doctor increasingly happy the more he thought about it. Killing Ted had been so much easier than he had expected. As a doctor, he had always had a bit of a God complex, something he had developed quickly following medical school, as his skills as a doctor had been superior to most others. The power to heal and save lives had led him to believe that he had God-like abilities.
He picked up a banana from the basket and started to peel the skin off of it, as he had done so easily with Ted’s face, to ensure no identification could be made if anyone was to come across his body before decomposition began. He thought about how it had felt when he felt the life drain away from Ted. He held the power to kill now. He felt a perverse pleasure when he remembered the feeling of Ted’s bones crunching as he separated the man’s joints one by one.
He watched his wife, her long red hair tightly spun into a bun at the nape of her neck, swirling the coffee in her cup while her eyes stared, empty and void, at a spot on the white tablecloth. He smiled at her as her gaze set upon him. Her upper lip tensed, and a crease appeared on her forehead, her mind in apparent turmoil.
He took the last bite of
his banana and placed the peel on the plate before him. He leaned back and with a large smile, he said “I love you, Peggy Sue. Always have, always will.”
At this, Peggy Sue stood up, dropped her napkin onto her plate, and carried both out of the dining room and into the kitchen. Richard’s smile did not fade in the least, as he knew she was his for life, and there was nothing anyone could ever do about that.
* * *
A few weeks later, Richard’s Cadillac pulled into their driveway on a very late Tuesday evening. The headlights would have normally bounced back off the garage doors and greeted him with brightness. Tonight however, the doctor was surprised to see the garage door open, the overhead lights already glowing brightly, spilling out onto the paved driveway. He brought the Cadillac close to the garage doors but was unable to park inside. Two large suitcases and a duffel bag were propped up near Peggy Sue’s Lincoln, blocking his parking spot. He turned the ignition and cut the headlights to the Cadillac.
As he walked to the Lincoln, he noticed the keys were in the ignition, but the engine was off. He removed the keys and dropped them in his trousers’ pocket. Turning to scan the garage, he noticed the door going inside the house was ajar. Peggy Sue must have returned inside in a hurry. He suddenly realized what was happening. She had decided to leave him for real this time, not just another empty threat like so many times before.
Just as his realization formulated in his mind, Peggy Sue returned to the garage, her purse in her hand. She had gone back inside to get the small pink and yellow carrier of all things necessary just as the Cadillac had arrived home. Now, faced with her husband, his lips in a straight line, hands firmly planted on his hips, she hurried around his small frame and made her way to the suitcases that sat on the floor near her car. She opened the rear door on the driver’s side and started loading her bags in the Lincoln.
“Where exactly do you think you are going, my dear?” Richard asked, his eyes staring at his wife’s red cascading curls as she bent down to pick up the second suitcase.
Oakwood Island Page 10