What Doesn't Kill You (A Suspense Collection)

by Tim Kizer

  “One more thing. I don’t know how it happened, but I believe that your son saw me, too. He saw you in that hospital room.”

  “What do you mean? He saw both of us?”

  “No, he saw you. I had your face when I met him.”

  “This is so…” Richard creased his forehead. “I don’t understand.”

  “You created me. I’m a character in your dream. I guess there’s part of you in me, in all of us populating your dream. That’s how I see it.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I’m not sure if I should tell you this.” Stanley let out a quiet sigh. “When your son saw me, he looked as if he saw a ghost. You do know what it means, don’t you?”

  An artificial smile surfaced on Richard’s face. “It must mean I’m dead,” he said. “And I’m okay with that. There’s nothing I can do about it, is there?” He cracked his neck from side to side. “I told you it is an afterlife dream.” Richard got up and walked up to the window. “So you’re saying he actually saw me?”

  “Yes.” Stanley nodded. “By the way, I forgot how long you said you’ve been dead. What’s your most conservative estimate?”

  “At least a year.”

  “Your son said that he’d been in a coma for two months. How did you know that he’d been hit by a car, if you were dead when it happened?”

  There was a short pause, and then Richard replied, “Somebody told me.”

  “Another character like me?”

  “Yes. His name was Luke.” Richard opened the blinds a crack and peeked outside.

  “So it’s been done before. Someone crossed into the real world before I did.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Richard turned around to face Stanley. “Maybe someday I’ll be able to do it, too.”

  “You know, you’re a good man, Richard.” Stanley lowered his eyes to the floor. “Remember you said that an almighty god wouldn’t allow war and diseases? I just realized that there are no wars in our world.”

  “Yes, only in a dream, Doc. Only in a dream.”

  “And I’m pretty sure that cancer hasn’t been eradicated in the real world yet. And neither has flu.” Stanley rose from the chair and sat down on the edge of his desk.

  “You are a very perceptive man.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “I have an idea.” Richard raised his hand. “We were on a week-long Caribbean cruise when I was alive. We had a blast there. Lots of great memories. Do you want to go? I’m pretty sure my version is as good as the original, if not better.”

  “I vote yes.”

  “Excellent.” Then Richard snapped his fingers.

  THE END

  Scorned

  An eighteen-year-old girl exacts vengeance on her cheating boyfriend with the help of a mysterious woman.

  Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,

  Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

  William Congreve, The Mourning Bride

  1.

  Being eighteen and in love—what could be more joyful than this? Especially when the one you love loves you back.

  Heather was the happiest girl in the world. Then she met Loretta, and her life changed forever.

  The encounter took place at the coffee shop one block down from Heather’s apartment building. It was one of her favorite spots to kill time when she didn’t feel like going home and dealing with parental pressure. Heather was sitting at a table in the patio, enjoying the gorgeous weather. As she read a text message from her boyfriend, Daniel, she heard a woman’s voice: “Hey, Heather, how are you doing today?”

  “I’m fine. Do I know you?” She lifted her eyes and saw a slim good-looking woman who was probably in her thirties.

  “Not yet.” The woman sat down opposite Heather. “My name’s Loretta. Do you have a minute?”

  “Well, I’m a little busy here.” Heather waved her cellphone. “Are you selling something?”

  “No, I’m not. I want to offer you an opportunity that you, I believe, would like very much.”

  “What is it?”

  “By the way, you’re texting your boyfriend, am I right?” Loretta nodded at Heather’s cellphone.

  “Yeah. My boyfriend.”

  “His name’s Daniel Bartlett, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Do you know him?”

  “I know of him, but I’ve never met him personally. The opportunity I just mentioned concerns Daniel.”

  “Okay. So what is it?” Heather looked at the cellphone screen to read the new message from Daniel. The message read: ‘I miss you, baby. Do you miss me?’

  “What would you do if you found out that Daniel was cheating on you?”

  “If he was cheating on me?” Heather’s fingers, which were about to type ‘I miss you too, sweetie,’ froze an inch away from the cellphone. She lifted her face and gave Loretta a curious look. “I’d probably rip his balls off.” She cracked a mischievous smile.

  “What if I told you that he indeed is cheating on you?” Loretta made a short pause and, before Heather had a chance to reply, continued, “How long have you and Daniel been going out?”

  “Eight months.” Heather closed the text message app. It looked like Loretta had succeeded in getting her attention. “What did you say about Daniel cheating on me?”

  “I was going to tell you that he’s been cheating on you this whole time.”

  “How do you know?” Heather had an unpleasant prickly feeling in her chest. She realized there was no objective reason for her to be anxious, but she simply couldn’t help it.

  Heather wasn’t a jealous type—at least she didn’t consider herself one—but being interested in information about Daniel’s unfaithfulness had nothing to do with jealousy.

  Why was she feeling disquieted? Well, maybe she was a jealous type to a certain degree.

  “There’s a girl named Christine Dunsmore in your school. She’s a senior. Do you know her?” Loretta asked.

  “I think I do. She’s in my Economics class.”

  “She’s cute, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Does she sleep with Daniel?” Heather noticed that her breath rate had increased.

  “Yes. And she’s not the only girl Daniel has on the side. Have you met Amy Markowski? She also goes to your school.”

  “I know her. She’s in my Health class. So he fucks Amy, too?”

  Loretta nodded.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Let me show you something.” Loretta opened her bag, took out a computer tablet, and turned it on. “Look at the text messages Christine and Daniel exchanged last night.” She tapped an icon on the tablet screen, expanding an application window to full size.

  “What is it?” Heather began scanning the lines of text displayed on the screen. They indeed appeared to be cellphone messages. She quickly recognized Daniel’s cellphone number, from which roughly half of the texts had been sent. According to the time stamps, the conversation had taken place last night, just as Loretta said. “Where did you get this?”

  Heather cringed as she read ‘I miss ur cock, honey.’ This message had been sent in response to Daniel’s ‘I love u, baby.’ It was obvious that Daniel had been communicating with a girl. Since Heather didn’t know Christine’s cellphone number, she couldn’t tell whether or not Christine was that girl.

  “We installed a text-spying app on Daniel’s cellphone.”

  “Who are ‘we’?”

  “My friends.”

  Heather let out an angry sigh when she saw Daniel’s text that read ‘Do u wanna fuck? I can be at ur place in 20.’

  “Are they cops or something?” Heather took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Her hopes of keeping cool went out the window when she read the girl’s reply: ‘But we already fucked today.’

  “No, they’re not cops. They’re just very resourceful. Let me show you something else.” Loretta minimized the window with text messages, opened a media player, and clicked the Play button.

  I
t took Heather about a minute to figure out what she was watching, and when she did, her heart stopped. It was a sex tape featuring Daniel and Christine. Right now Heather was looking at them kissing each other on Daniel’s bed. Both were stark-naked. Judging by the angle the video was shot from, the camera was located near the television set, which stood opposite the bed. Seeing Daniel’s room on the screen of a stranger’s computer tablet was surreal.

  “Who taped this?” Heather asked in a hoarse voice. “Daniel?”

  She felt her lunch backing up into her throat as Daniel’s head bobbed between Christine’s thighs. Yeah, he did love eating pussy.

  “No. One of my friends put a spy camera in Daniel’s room.”

  “You’ve got more of these?”

  “We have one with Amy. Would you like to watch it, too?”

  “No.” Heather swallowed the sour taste of stomach acid. Her brain began pulsating, she felt the ground slipping away from under her. “This is enough.” She tapped the Stop button and shifted her eyes to Loretta, clenching her fists, her scalp sweating profusely with fury. “Tell me more about the opportunity you want to offer me.”

  “To put it simply—revenge. I’m offering you a chance to punish Daniel for cheating on you.”

  “How? Are you going to beat him up?”

  Heather began to wish she had a strong roughneck brother, who could straighten Daniel out in a dark alley.

  “No. We’re going to let you do it yourself. You’ll have four—five days to abuse Daniel any way you please. He’ll be tied and won’t be able to resist. There will be no witnesses. You’ll have complete freedom to do whatever you want to him.” Loretta paused to allow Heather to digest her words. “So how does my offer sound?”

  Heather knitted her eyebrows. “Did he text her today?”

  “Christine or Amy?”

  “Either one.”

  “He and Amy have been texting each other for the last hour.”

  “Oh, I see. Did he fuck Amy or Christine today?”

  “It appears that he didn’t.”

  Heather dialed Daniel’s number and, when he answered, said, “Hey, baby, I just wanted to hear your voice. What are you doing?”

  “Watching TV at home. And you?”

  “I’m at McDonald’s, killing time. Do you love me?”

  “Of course, baby. I love you more than anything else in the world.”

  “And you’ll never leave me?”

  “Never, sweetie. I only want to be with you.”

  “Me too. Bye-bye, baby. I love you.” Heather hung up. Then she turned her face to Loretta and said, “Okay. I’m in.”

  “Very good.”

  “What do you want in return? You’re not doing it for free, are you?”

  “Yes, we do expect to receive something from you, Heather.”

  It suddenly occurred to Heather that Loretta could be a lesbian looking for young pussy.

  “Is it money? I don’t have a lot of it, just so you know.”

  “No, it’s not money?”

  “Is it sex?”

  Loretta shook her head. “It’s not sex either. I promise that you’ll find my services quite affordable.”

  After Loretta explained what they wanted from her, Heather asked, “When are we going to do it?”

  “As soon as you have what we need. How long will it take you to get it?”

  Heather shrugged. “No more than a week.”

  “Sounds good. Here’s my email.” Loretta handed Heather a card with an email address typed on it. “One more thing. In order to preserve the element of surprise, please do not tell Daniel that you know about his cheating. Can you do that for me? I realize that the temptation will be very strong, but you have to resist it, okay?”

  “Sure. I’ll keep my mouth shut. A week is not such a long time.”

  “And it goes without saying that you cannot tell anyone about our arrangement.”

  “I understand that.”

  Loretta patted Heather on the hand. “I’ve been in your shoes, Heather. And I kicked this guy’s ass hard. It was the sweetest feeling in the world. Almost as good as sex.”

  “Did this guy cheat on you again?”

  “Not until after I dumped him.” Loretta paused. “You won’t feel the same after this experience, Heather. You’re going to feel empowered. Your confidence will shoot through the roof.”

  2.

  Things went as planned. Exactly one week after the fateful meeting at the coffee shop, Heather emailed Loretta that she had done her part.

  Loretta called her half an hour later. “How do you plan to explain your absence to your parents?” she asked.

  “It’s spring break. I’ll tell them my friend invited me to her family’s summer house.”

  “Tell them the house is in Canaan Valley so you’ll have a reason why there’s no cell phone connection.”

  “You want me to turn off my cell?”

  “It will be safer if I have it while you are in that cabin with Daniel. We want to keep phones as far from your boyfriend as possible.”

  “Will I be able to call my Mom from a regular phone? I know her. She’ll start panicking if I don’t call her at least once a day.”

  “I’ll arrange that. And it will look as if you’re calling from Canaan Valley.”

  Heather had to admit that it was a neat detail: her parents might get suspicious if she called them from a hidden number.

  “So I’ll see you tomorrow?” Heather said.

  “Tomorrow. Please be ready.”

  3.

  Loretta came to pick her up at nine in the morning. She arrived in a massive GMC Yukon, which surprised Heather, who expected her to ride in an elegant European car. Loretta’s driver was a tanned man in his thirties with a crew haircut; he was what they called ‘ruggedly handsome;’ he didn’t utter a word during the whole trip.

  Since Heather had been blindfolded as soon as she’d gotten in the car, she had absolutely no idea where they were when the drive was over. If she had to guess, she’d say they’d brought her to West Virginia. It took them two and a half hours to get to the cabin, but it didn’t mean that the place was two and half hours away from her house. For all she knew, they might have driven in circles around the area for an hour. One thing was clear to her: they were in the woods and the nearest neighbor was probably a mile away. As Heather walked towards the porch, she noticed elegant iron grilles on the windows, which she found to be a useful feature; she wouldn’t want Daniel to escape through a window.

  “Are you planning to show Daniel your face?” Loretta asked while unlocking the front door.

  “Is there a way to avoid that?”

  “There’s a Darth Vader mask with a voice changer in your room. Do you want to try it?”

  After thinking for a few moments, Heather shook her head. “I want Dan to see who’s doing it to him.”

  “Okay.”

  It had just come to Heather’s attention that Loretta was wearing gloves. Did she need the gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints or did she simply think they looked good on her? Frankly, Heather didn’t care.

  Then she saw Daniel.

  Her boyfriend was lying on his back on the large metal sleigh bed that sat in the middle of the living room. He was wearing nothing but black boxer trunks, his arms and legs were chained to the bedposts. The chains were too short for Daniel to be able to bend his limbs. The bed appeared sturdy; Daniel had no chance of breaking it. Heather was pleased that Loretta’s helpers hadn’t half-assed their job.

  It looks like a scene from a bondage porn movie, thought Heather. And to make the picture the complete, she needed to do something about those sexy boxer trunks.

  Except for the bed, a medium-sized wooden table, and an office chair with wheels, the room was bare.

  On the table there were tools that Loretta believed Heather might need to have handy when giving Daniel his just deserts: a curved claw hammer, a drill, a straight wooden cane, a pair of pliers, several knives of di
fferent sizes, a leather bullwhip, and an electric stun gun.

  “I recommend this.” Loretta lifted the stun gun and waved it. “Very painful and doesn’t cause permanent damage. If you don’t overuse it, of course.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “And before I forget.” Loretta gestured Heather to look under the table and lightly kicked the bedpan that sat there. “You’ll have to help him out unless you’re okay with him pissing and shitting in bed.”

  “I don’t know how to use it.”

  “It’s very easy, you’ll figure it out in no time.”

  Then Loretta showed Heather her room, the bathroom, and the kitchen. At the end of the tour, she said, “If you need to contact me, use this.” Loretta took a black Motorola walkie-talkie out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Heather. “Push this button.” She pointed at the large button in the middle of the device. “And tell the guys that you want to talk to me.”

  “Got it.” Heather slipped the walkie-talkie into her shorts pocket.

  “One more thing. Please, keep the blinds shut, just in case.”

  “Okay.”

  When Loretta was about to leave the cabin, Heather asked, “Are you going to lock us up?”

  “Yes. For your own safety. I hope you don’t mind staying inside all day.”

  “As a matter of fact, I enjoy it.”

  Loretta looked into Heather’s eyes, lightly clasped her arm, and said, “Much as you hate Daniel, I don’t recommend killing him. You don’t want to have this on your conscience for the rest of your life.”

  There was a short silence, after which Heather said, “But I still have this option, right?”

  Loretta nodded. “No one’s going to stop you if you decide to do it.”

  4.

  Heather scrutinized the drill. No, she probably wasn’t going to use it on Daniel. When you drilled a hole in a human body, the risk was too high of going through some important artery or some vital organ. And don’t forget the terrible scars. Heather didn’t want her future husband to be half-paralyzed or have ugly scars. No matter how passionate she was going to get while handling Daniel in the next four days, she had to make sure that his gorgeous body and skin remained in the same condition as they had been before he found himself on this bed.