Fook

by Brian Drinkwater

  “Jason it’s true.”

  “No. You know what’s true? This. This right now is true. The situation we currently find ourselves in. That’s what’s fucking true!”

  Derek watched as the previously unfamiliar anger returned to Jason’s face, then faded as quickly as it had appeared.

  “As I was saying...I wanted to tell you about the blood. Even though my grandmother had warned me to never tell a soul, you were someone that I thought I could trust but then you had to go and get her involved,” he motioned toward the bed.

  “Bethany?” Derek called out, finally managing to prop himself up on one elbow, as he unsuccessfully attempted to see the top of the bed.

  “Now, I knew I couldn’t trust her. I mean, how can you trust someone who’d rather climb out a window than offer the simple courtesy of seeing a date to its end?"

  “Bethany, are you alright?,” Derek called out concerned.

  “She’s fine,” Jason assured.

  “What did you do?”

  “Hey!” Jason snapped. “You’re losing focus here!”

  Derek returned his concerned gaze to his roommate.

  “You were so gung ho to find out what was in the core and now all you can think about is that little bitch.” Calm again, “As I was saying, there was nothing special about your machine. Don’t get me wrong, it's a beautiful display of craftsmanship. You should be very proud. The blood, my blood, however is the true star here. As much as I’ve tried to understand it, sadly it still remains a mystery to me. I haven’t been able to find any record of even one individual outside of our family, with the same condition. I guess you could call it a defense mechanism, sort of like fight or flight. In this case it acts as the flight by somehow creating a link between here and there upon imminent death. Unfortunately I need to practically die to use it, and even then I don’t have any control, as I found out with my little hanging experiment. That’s where our…sorry…your machine comes into play. By delivering a targeted blast of electricity directly through the blood filled core, we managed to trigger the flight defense and with a bit of programming wizardry, I was able to not only harness but aim that reaction toward a specific place and time.

  “You’re insane.”

  “I’m insane? No, I’m very sane. It’s you who’s insane my friend,” Jason asserted as he got to his feet. “Or at least that’s what I’m counting on everyone thinking.”

  “Everyone?” Derek questioned confused.

  “You see, even though I believe you were part of that whole bedroom scheme and even though you went behind my back to test my blood and who knows what other deceitful things you’ve done during our friendship, I still can’t bring myself to kill you. I don’t know. Call it a weakness, but I guess I still kind of like you. But seeing that I can’t have you exposing my little secret to the world, I do need to get you out of the way,” Jason explained as he made his way to the open bedroom window.

  Derek struggled to sit up.

  “After they see what you’ve done here, they won’t believe a thing you say, especially if you start talking about time travel and magic blood and how your shy, timid roommate set you up.”

  “What did you do, Jason?” Derek pushed against the floor, fighting the waning effects of the drug.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Jason insisted as he stepped out of the bedroom window, onto the sloped roof just below. “You were the one that texted Bethany, saying you were coming over. You were the one that everyone saw stumbling up to her front door and into her bedroom and you’ll be the one they find in this room when I’m gone. No one knows about our little incident in the lab tonight. No one knows that I climbed in through this window and hid in the closet while you were stumbling around downstairs and no one knows the pleasure I took from slitting that little whore ear to ear,” he punctuated his rant with a devilish grin before disappearing into the night.

  Shuffling toward the bed, Derek pulled himself to his feet as Bethany’s battered body came into view, the once white sheets now stained by the life which had been drained from her nearly decapitated head.

  “I’m sorry I left earlier, I...”

  Derek turned to see, a vaguely familiar girl standing in the doorway. Glancing at the body and then back at the new girl, “I didn’t—”

  Too terrified for an explanation, Rachel’s scream drowned out Derek’s plea of innocence as she turned and ran from the room, screaming for someone to call the police.

  Though innocent, he knew that he didn’t stand a chance against the evidence surrounding him. As quickly as his weakened legs could carry him, Derek stumbled toward the open window. Bethany’s bedroom was only on the second floor, however, given the ten foot tall ceilings, it was still at least a twelve or thirteen foot drop to the bushes below. Luckily, the first floor jutted out from that side of the house, giving him a small, sharply sloped roof to step out onto to make his escape a bit easier.

  Propping himself against the window frame he attempted to lift his leg, only getting it six inches off the carpet before its weight proved too much for his weakened body and fell back to the floor.

  “In Bethany’s room! He’s still in there!” Rachel’s voice echoed through the house.

  He knew he didn’t have much time. It wasn’t the cops that were going to show up first. In a matter of moments the room would be filled with horrified and angry sorority girls. He wouldn’t even live to receive his life sentence if they got to him first. Panicked and determined to find safety, he lifted his leg again, this time grabbing hold of his knee as his muscles started to tremble and managed to get his calf and the side of his foot onto the edge of the window sill. The hard part done, he shoved his leg through the opening just as Rachel reappeared in the doorway with two of her sisters.

  Rachel knew where not to look as she focused her attention on Derek. The other two either hadn’t been warned or hadn’t understood the severity of their sister’s claims as their eyes immediately turned to the bloodied corpse sprawled across the bed, sending one girl back into the hall and the other into a series of bent over, stomach churning convulsions.

  Taking advantage of the girls’ momentarily distracted states, Derek returned his attention to the window as he ducked beneath the raised pane.

  “Stop!” Rachel screamed.

  He didn’t get a chance to see if the girl was charging him or not as the slope of the small roof proved too much for his trembling legs, and instead of cautiously stepping out onto the shingled surface and gently lowering himself down as he’d planned, his foot slid down the roof and off the edge, sending him on a somersaulting plummet toward the bushes.

  “He’s getting away!” Rachel cried from the window.

  Looking up at the girl in the window from his dense, leafy bed, Derek knew he didn’t have time to lay around and recover. Managing to free himself from his tangled prison of broken branches, Derek slinked out onto the manicured lawn and managing to get to his feet, ducked through a row of tall hedges.

  “Come on! Hurry!” Derek could hear another girl cry from the front porch as police sirens joined the hunt in the distance.

  Looking behind him as he stumbled through a neighboring property and onto a side street it occurred to him that he had no place to go. He couldn’t go back to the dorm. It would only be a matter of time before the police came looking for him there. Besides that, Jason would probably be there, pretending to be asleep to ensure his own alibi. His only hope was the lab. He had to get to the machine. He had to—

  The crack of a wooden plank breaking in two across his face put an instant end to all thought as his feet came out from under him and the blow of the shattered board in conjunction with the impact of the ground jarred his mind.

  “You just don’t know when to give up, do you?”

  With the brief thunderstorm dissipating, pockets of stars danced overhead as Derek struggled to regain the breath that had been stolen from him by the impact of the ground. Pulling himself together, the stars' movement
began to slow to a more tolerable spin as Jason stepped into view.

  “Now, where do you think you’re going?” Jason asked, pausing as if he actually expected a response.

  Doing all he could to maintain consciousness, all Derek could do was groan.

  “Did that hurt?” Jason asked, kneeling beside his fallen roommate. “Ooh, I guess I did hit you kind of hard,” he poked at Derek’s already swelling face. “Seriously though, where are you going? The dorm’s back that way,” he motioned back toward the sorority house. “But you wouldn’t be stupid enough to go there. So where could you possibly go to escape what you’ve done?” Jason rubbed at his chin as the answer drew a smile to his face. “No… You weren’t… You didn’t think that… Then again, I do like that better,” he spoke to himself.

  Only half aware of Jason’s presence, Derek closed his eyes in an attempt to calm the rolling ocean on which he lay.

  “Tell you what,” Jason continued as he fumbled through his pocket. “Since we’ve been friends for so long, I’m gonna help you out. I’m going to get you out of here but first you have to promise to cooperate,” he emphasized as he withdrew another syringe from his pocket and, plucking the cap from the needle, leaned over his friend. “You, my friend, are going on a little journey,” he smiled as he slid the needle into Derek’s jugular.

  The ocean calmed and the dancing stars overhead faded as the world was replaced by darkness.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Unbelievable! You really don’t feel that?”

  Feeling just as he had when he’d awoke on Bethany’s floor, Derek struggled to open his eyes, hoping to find himself in his bed with the TV on and the worst hangover in history, but the excited voice circling around him wasn’t that of any known TV personality, though it was terrifyingly familiar.

  “It’s all over. Just like before.”

  Derek opened his eyes to the sight of Jason staring at his outstretched palms and kicking up dust and gravel as he paced excitedly around. Overhead, large bundles of wire crisscrossed the night sky and the previously passing storm appeared to be regaining its hold on the night sky with an even more ominous looking ceiling. He didn’t need to look around. He knew where he was. Though this time he couldn’t claim to be the least bit excited about it.

  “Hey,” Jason kicked at his awakening friend. “Wake up.”

  Fighting the second dose of the incapacitating concoction flowing through his veins, Derek slowly rolled his head from side to side as the waves beneath him once again began their nausea inducing ballet.

  “You know, I wasn’t sure that I could do this without you,” Jason spoke as he sat down on the ground beside Derek and began poking at the iPad within the briefcase. “Sure, I watched you set it all up but I’ll be honest, I don’t know the first thing about this electric shit and all I could picture was being fried to a crisp trying to hook up those wires,” he motioned to the cables that connected the device to the large transformers behind them. “You know what though?” he slapped Derek on the chest, drawing a hollow thud as Derek remained motionless, only wishing to be able to move in response to the blunt pain. “I did it and ta-da. Here we are.”

  Derek just stared up at him with as much of an unenthusiastic glare as he could muster.

  “What? Not excited? Where’s your adventurous spirit now? Don’t tell me you’re not at least a little excited by this still. I know we were just here but it’s still pretty fucking cool, though it is a bit later in the day this time,” Jason acknowledged his miscalculation as he looked around at the darkness of the surrounding woods. “Oh well, at least we’re not siamese twins, right?” he laughed as he issued another slap. “Anyway, I’ve gotta be going but you enjoy your new home.” Standing up, “oh, I almost forgot. Here.” Reaching into the backpack, he pulled out the white medical coat and tossed it at Derek, the white fabric landing on his face and blocking his view as Jason depressed the button on the orb in his hand.

  The transformers cracked and whirred as power surged through the yard. Rocking his head back and forth, the coat slid aside just in time for Derek to see Jason and the machine disappear, leaving behind a soft, fading glow as the super charged equipment returned to normal.

  “Where was he going to go?” Derek wondered as he struggled to move his fingertip against the coarse gravel. Turning his head to the side once again, the white coat came into view as did a tiny paper sticking out of one of the side pockets.

  Sarah

  1342 Belmont St.

  He’d been looking up Sarah’s college address when Jason had shown up in the lab. Apparently Jason had finished the search for him and jotted the desired information onto the tiny scrap, but why? It was obvious that he’d snapped. He was the last person Derek would’ve ever expected to suffer from…whatever it was he was suffering from. Or, maybe this was the real Jason and for all those years he’d managed to keep up the Oscar worthy performance.

  If the situation hadn’t been so serious, he might have laughed at such a thought or at least cracked a smile. Jason was a normal guy or at least he used to be. This wasn’t him. This was the result of years of torment, capped off by the perceived betrayal of his best and only friend. He’d come back for him. Once he calmed down he’d realize what he’d done and be back. But what about the blood? What was he talking about in the lab? Was what he said really possible? It had to be. His current predicament proved it. But how? And what about…oh God…Bethany. The memory of the butchered girl grabbed hold of his stomach and with a violent twist, finished the job that the waves had struggled to accomplish.

  Struggling for command of his left arm, Derek wiped at his mouth before sliding his hand toward the paper, knocking it from the pocket and onto the ground. Jason hadn’t written down the address to be nice, Derek realized. Reading the now visible, last line, his heart sank.

  See you there

  *****

  “Daddy, Daddy! I did it!” Abby announced as she appeared in the doorway.

  “What did you do?” Dustin questioned as he compared the register’s contents against the report printed out on the receipt paper.

  “Well, first I turned off the T.V. and then I put away my chair and then I threw away my trash...”

  She was going to give him an exact play by play account of the last five minutes, Dustin thought as he signed the bottom of the receipt and slipped it under the rubber band that held the recently counted money together.

  “...and then I picked up my crayons because I dropped them on the floor and they rolled everywhere. That took a while because I had to put them all back in the box but I was missing one so I had to look for it...”

  “Ah huh,” Dustin acknowledged that he was still listening as he bent down to punch the code into the safe just below the register. The door released with a click.

  “That’s a lot of money,” Abby paused in her story when she saw the three large stacks of cash sitting on the top shelf of the safe.

  “That’s why it’s kept in the safe,” Dustin acknowledged the unusually large amount of money currently residing within the large steel box. Typically the owner never let money stack up for more than a day or two before making a run to the bank. Judging from the pile, today’s take brought the total number of days to four.

  “Is it yours?” Abby questioned.

  “No sweetie. I wish it was but it belongs to the store.”

  “What is the store going to do with it? It’s just a building. It doesn’t need money.”

  Laughing, “Not the store itself, the owner of the store,” Dustin clarified.

  “Oh. Who’s that?”

  “Mr. Levrett,” Dustin locked the safe and turned to face his daughter. “You remember Mr. Levrett from this morning.”

  “Oh. I like him. He’s funny looking.”

  “Yes, I guess he sort of is, but let's just keep that to ourselves. Daddy needs to keep his job so he can continue to buy you food and clothes and those pesky crayons,” Dustin poked at his daughter’s stomach, attempt
ing to draw a laugh but failing as the mention of the crayons returned her memory to her story.

  “You know where I found the missing crayon?”

  “Where?”

  “Under the crayon box. I looked everywhere but it was under the box the whole time. Can you believe that?” the precocious girl questioned with her hands on her hips.

  “No I can’t,” Dustin mimicked his daughter’s seriousness, drawing the laugh he’d been seeking.

  “Don’t make fun of me, Daddy,” Abby giggled.

  “Then don’t be so silly,” Dustin laughed as he hoisted his daughter into the air, drawing even more laughter.

  Suddenly a loud bang rattled the glass door to the store, putting an abrupt end to the jovial moment.

  Putting his daughter back down behind the counter, Dustin quickly grabbed the gun from on top of the safe. “Stay right here,” he instructed his daughter as he cautiously peered over the countertop in the direction of the front door. The bottom half of the door was covered by a large Budweiser advertisement while the top half remained almost completely clear except for the security sticker and store hours posted to one side. From his vantage point he couldn’t see anyone at the door.

  Cautiously, he made his way around the counter, once again gesturing for Abby to remain where she was.

  Abby acknowledged her father’s command with a worried nod as she began pulling nervously at Mr. Pickles, the tattered stuffed bunny she’d had since she was a baby.

  Holding the gun out in front of him, Dustin could feel his heart pounding at his ribs, the impact seeming to rattle his entire body as he struggled to hold the gun steady. Approaching the door, he still couldn’t see anyone on the other side. The parking lot directly beyond the door was empty as well. His car was parked out back. All he could think, as he took each step closer, was that someone was suddenly going to smash the glass with a hammer or a bat or even worse, a gun and let themselves in to do who knows what to him and his daughter in order to get to the abnormally large amount of cash currently stashed in the safe.