by Alan Spencer
“This has nothing to do with treating me or some doctor’s code of honor.” Craig rose to his feet. “Your life isn’t interesting enough so you have to become someone else, is that it?”
The doctor didn’t refute the statement. The doctor was on the verge of many wild, ridiculous expressions. It chilled him to wonder what channeled through the man’s head.
“Your machine’s an excuse to be a voyeur. You watched Susan and me make love. You’ve been there the entire time while everything’s happened.”
“I’ve gotten to know your family and friends quite well too.” The doctor kept on track with his own agenda. He was on the verge of many wild, ridiculous expressions. “And they’re not happy at all with you. Now, it’s time for the real treatment.”
Highway 90
Wintry gusts batted the parked ’81 Chrysler station wagon. He shivered in the cold. The heater spat out lukewarm air, and now, the hot air had stopped coming out altogether. He escaped Dr. Krone and the lake. No, Dr. Krone had released him. Nobody could help him. He was stuck in the moment, and the moment was soon to unfold. The highway in front of him was swallowed up by pelting snow. The car’s engine rattled, and shortly after, the car conked out. He was stranded. Miles in both directions, white blanketed the horizon.
“Don’t tell me the car broke down!” It was Katie. She was in the backseat sprawled out in the late stages of giving birth.
Oh God, not this.
Anything but this moment!
Katie’s water had already broken, and her contractions were seconds apart. It wouldn’t be long before the baby made its way into the world.
He dialed his cell phone, his fingers trembling. Craig couldn’t get a signal. “Hey, I got a signal when this happened the first time.”
He pounded the seat. This isn’t making sense.
Katie voiced her confusion. “What are you talking about the first time?—you have a child with somebody else?”
He rubbed at his face, trying to regain his composure. “No, Katie. You won’t understand.”
Wait. What does she know? If she’s a memory Dr. Krone’s conjured up, who is she really?
“Who’s my favorite baseball team?”
“The Atlanta Braves. Why the hell are you asking me that? Craig, I’m scared. If we can’t get to the hospital, what are we going to do?”
He dialed the cell phone again. The buttons didn’t work. The screen was blank. He wasn’t sure what to make of her answer. She was correct, the Braves were his favorite team. Everybody from his past spoke on their own accord, and it fit their personalities.
How was it possible?
Craig flipped on the hazard lights next, and then he dialed the phone again. Nothing. “Goddamn it!”
This is about regrets, right? Do something different. She’s in your mind. She’s passed on. You can’t lose the same baby twice. You can’t lose Katie twice.
“I don’t have much choice. I’ll be quick. I’ll call for help, and I’ll come right back.”
“I don’t want to be alone,” she begged him, her fingers digging into the seat, anticipating another contraction. “It hurts so much. I’m not ready for this. This isn’t a good idea!”
He looked her over, splayed in the backseat so helpless. For a moment, he believed Katie was real again, but she wasn’t. It was Dr. Krone’s manipulations. He had to escape his mind. How did one accomplish such a feat? Craig knew Dr. Krone wanted him to make changes and face the problems of his past, and that meant he’d have to play into the doctor’s games for now.
“Keep my phone,” he said, giving it to her. “I’ll run as fast as I can. There’s no choice. Help can’t arrive unless they know we need it. Forgive me for leaving you.”
“You bastard!”
He shut the door. Would this be another regret?
She’s deceased, how could it get any worse?
The wind battered him. He clutched the median to stay upright. The snow increased the longer he traveled, the winds literally working against him. He was ankle-deep in snow now, his legs burning, and his body weakening. He prayed there was a service station off the next exit.
Exit 30A was barely visible ahead. He walked downhill, careful not to fall down the exit. The service station had its lights on. The open sign was a faded beacon.
“Thank God.”
He hurried to the destination, and finally arriving there, he threw open the door. An older man sat behind a desk watching television, a late night rerun of Family Ties. He sipped on a cup of coffee raucously, with an opened bag of potato chips on the counter. He wore a faded gray sweater and blue jeans, a shawl wrapped tightly around his neck to ward off the cold.
“Hey there, fella.” The man was happy; he didn’t have to suffer the weather alone anymore. “Come on inside and get warm. It’s crazy out there.”
He cut to the point. “Let me use your phone.”
“Sure.” He pointed at the phone near the chips rack. “But it’s not working. The storm’s knocked it out.”
“Do you have a working vehicle I can use? It’s an emergency. My wife’s on the highway in labor. My car broke down. It’s barely a mile out of the way. Please. She’s alone.”
The old man eyed him with skepticism. “What kind of a man would leave his pregnant wife alone on the highway, especially during a mean storm like this?”
“My phone won’t get a signal. And she’s so close to giving birth. What choice did I have? I had to do something.”
Wait, why is he judging me? That never happened. I didn’t come here.
“You’re not going to help me then?”
The old man watched the television screen. “Yeah. You about got it.”
Craig noticed a set of car keys behind the counter resting on a stool. He reached for them, bringing his body halfway over the counter. Swiping them, he ran out into the parking lot. There was only one car out there, the choice obvious.
Caught in headlights, he was suddenly blinded. Then a car screeched, plowing through the deep snow, and afterwards, the car fishtailed and slid on black ice. He leapt out of the car’s direct path as the vehicle smashed through the front entrance with a great smash of glass and the give of steel beams. He landed on the pavement in a tailspin, looking up at the vehicle and discovering it was his station wagon. Navigating through the wreckage, he entered the gaping hole that used to be the entrance. He winced, discovering the cashier was pinned against the wall, the bumper flattening his rib cage.
The man was dead.
Craig stared at the car in horror. The lights were out, and it was pure darkness inside. Did Katie drive all this way? How could she in labor?
He mustered the words. “Katie?—are you okay?”
He feared walking to the station wagon. Was she hurt? What force impelled her to drive through the gas station? Was it an accident? The speed she was driving, he believed she was trying to plow into him.
The car windows were too much in shadow to view inside. Craig waited. Two pieces of glass fell from the broken entrance behind him. Minutes dragged on, and still, nothing happened. He was on the verge of calling out again when the driver’s side door opened.
“Honey, what are you doing?”
Craig took a step closer. He couldn’t look into the window. Everything was abyss black.
“Please, say something.”
He failed to make out the profile of Katie inside. She had to be at the driver’s seat, perhaps slumped over.
Unless someone stole the car.
“Is that you, Katie?”
The old man’s leg jittered in an after-death twitch.
Craig didn’t want to look into the car. She was inside, but it wasn’t her. It was Dr. Krone’s version of her. He couldn’t trust his surroundings or even the ones he loved.
He scanned the wrecked shelves of snack foods and broken bottles of soda for a light source. He finally discovered a flashlight in the mess. It didn’t have batteries.
“Shit.”
&nbs
p; Craig lowered to his haunches and sorted through a pile of Snickers bars and a deflated bag of Doritos for a pack of D batteries. He inserted them and aimed the yellow beam toward the car.
Crab-walking backwards in an instantaneous reaction, he shouted in shock, “Katie, Katie—no!”
Blood dribbled from her mouth in a continuous flow. She was hunched in the seat, her belly wedged against the steering wheel. And when she jerked awake, an alien sound escaped from his throat, one of stone-cold terror. Katie stomped out of the car, moving her damaged body at a slow, determined pace.
He took it all in. Her face was corpse blue. The left eye was all white, no pupil, the eye slowly sinking into the back of her socket. Blood issued from a set of broken front teeth. Grimy red streamed down her legs in heavy black crimson trails. It drip, drip, dripped from between her legs with each new step she took. Her bathrobe hung loosely from her body in dirty flaps and folds.
She hissed, “You…left…me…alone.”
“I had to, honey. I didn’t leave you. My phone, you know it wasn’t working. The car broke down. What could I do? I had to get help. You know I was coming back—you know it!”
“You don’t know how to drive a fah-king car.” She coughed up blood and spat it to the side. “I got it to run fine. What’s the matter with you? You were always a pitiful failure. You can’t even hold down a descent job. Why did I marry you?”
He suffered a vicious bout of tremors. “I-I love you. I’m sorry it happened like this. I panicked. Please understand.”
She didn’t explain why she tried to run him over outside or why she smashed through the gas station. And there was the other dilemma. She was dead in pallor, dead for real, he thought, especially when her right eye was completely sucked up into the socket and pink tissue replaced the orb.
He wept, overwhelmed by surreal emotion. “H-honey, you’re…you’re dead.”
She screeched so loud, offended by his observation. “My baby is dead because of you!”
Katie stomped after him, her decision to inflict pain upon him decided. He froze, unable to comprehend that this was an attack. She wasn’t limber, but she was powerful. She reached him in seconds, her hands digging into his shoulders. Claiming hold of him, she launched him against the bathroom door. His shoulder cracked the surface, absorbing the impact, and his bone radiated with white-hot burning pain. He prayed he hadn’t dislocated the shoulder blade or unhinged a rotator cup. Thrown to the floor, he cradled his shoulder, moaning softly, rocking himself to combat the agony.
Dead vocal cords threatened, “I will wash you in the blood of our dead child."
“What are you saying?” He couldn’t hold back the torment of watching his dead wife skulk about the room, bleeding from the face and legs. “Don’t talk like that. It wasn’t my fault. The situation was out of my control. I never wanted any of this to happen.”
“I’m still dead regardless of your feelings.” She turned direction, then threw open a back door and entered it. “Dead forever.”
Clop. Clop. Clop.
She was barefoot and skulking about the station, seeking something, and what, he failed to imagine. He wasn’t going anywhere, experiencing so much pain. After many moments, she returned, coming in closer. He gazed up at her. She was a ghoul drooling blood and broken bits of teeth. Her robe came undone, her sagging breasts spattered in red, the distended belly blackening from the middle, the rot slowly spreading to other vital places. She kicked up a horrendous smell.
“W-what are you doing, Katie?” He managed to speak through a tight throat. “Stop this insanity.” He raised his voice. “Dr. Krone, where are you hiding—where are you? Stop this, stop this now! You know me, Katie. I wouldn’t intentionally hurt you.”
He scanned the room. There was nothing outside the windows except snow for miles. He was trapped with his dead vengeful wife.
Out of nowhere, she dropped a steel bucket onto the floor with a rusty clang. She propped it between her legs, and droplets of blood pinged inside. The flow increased once the bucket was in position. He stared in horror. The pain was abating in his shoulder, but the shock of the scene kept him still. Deathly afraid.
Why is she doing with the bucket?
“What’s Dr. Krone doing to you, Katie?—he’s doing something to you. You must tell me what it is.”
Katie’s smile wasn’t natural, and it wasn’t hers. It curled too much at the sides, and it spread out so long, the lips couldn’t possibly stretch that far. Again, she was a ghoul, so pale and dead. This wasn’t his wife. Dr. Krone’s imagination was at work, distorting and darkening reality.
“I warned you, you could die.” She watched the blood fill the bucket. “Face your fears. You said you wanted to get well. But you get so violent. You’re a danger to society. Do you want to be locked up, Mr. Horsy?”
“You bastard!”
She cackled in delight. Her belly shriveled audibly. She clapped her hands once, looking down. “Oh, the bucket’s full now.”
Craig used the wall to work up to a standing position. He hobbled for the entrance, but he was driven back to the ground, tackled by the shoulders, and yanked back to where he came from. Her stink washed over him in the form of blood and bile as he was sent crashing beside the bucket. He reached out to tip it over, but he was too late. Seized by the neck, kicked between the shoulders, head lifted, hair yanked, neck forced forward, he was dunked into the steaming bucket of crimson.
“Gahwk!”
He closed his eyes. Sticky blood filled his ear canals and nostrils. It was so hot, unnaturally warm, it burned his face at a scalding temperature. Gobs of flesh were mixed in. Placenta. After-birth.
Muffled hysterics. “Drown in your child’s blood!”
He was doing just that. His head swelled and filled with pressure. He refused to open his mouth. He couldn’t call it blood, it was disgusting and not of a human. It was red. It was black. It was animal’s blood. It was rancid blood. It was the blood rendered from tainted meat.
He thrashed, but Katie sat on his back like an anchor. He frantically scanned the floor with his hands, searching for a weapon. What he found was an electrical cord. He played with it, tugging and jerking it back and forth. Desperate for air, his skull tightening against his brain, his mouth threatening to open and scream and taste the vile contents of the bucket, he tossed up the cord. The first attempt was lame, landing uselessly to her left. He collected it again, each bend of the cord another second he was closer to drowning. The next attempt, the cord whipped her back, and she laughed out loud, amused by his fight.
“You have to do more than that, Mr. Horsy, to stop me!”
Angry and fueled by the wicked sensations crawling up and down his spinal cord and bursting into his skull, he threw up the cord and somehow it wrapped around Katie’s throat. He tightened the slack and jerked it forward. She cawed in shock and faltered from his back. He lifted his head up, gasping for air. Gel-thick fluid dripped down his face and clotted his hair. The berating laughter at his impending death ceased.
He cleaned his eyes with the tips of his fingers and faltered against the check-out counter, weak and panting. “Katie, you don’t have to do this. Please, you’re killing me. Let’s talk about this.”
She was facedown on the floor. Motionless. Her chest didn’t move to breathe. “Katie?”
Craig crept to her. He didn’t trust her. This wasn’t his wife.
Fresh blood circled her head. She’d cracked her nose against the floor. He touched her with his foot. “Katie, are you alive?”
She remained still.
And that’s when he caught Dr. Krone watching through the back window. It was frosted over, his features two eyes and a nose. He darted away once he was caught.
“No you don’t!”
Craig sprinted across the shop and threw open the back door in pursuit. The doctor disappeared into the storm, well hidden. Running outside, he sucked in the below-freezing cold and accepted the mean gusts that smacked into his bo
dy.
“Stay out of my mind!” He belted it out once more, this time falling to his knees. “Stay out of my mind, you demented asshole!”
The winter sucked him up, and trapping him, the snow piled all around him until he was buried.
The device resembled a giant corkscrew connected to a man’s head. Leather straps down the man’s cheeks and buckles clamped firmly at his chin. The man wore a straightjacket, and he was sedated. The drool and glassy eyes revealed that much.
Craig watched the tip of the corkscrew puncture into the man’s skull with a drawn-out squish and brittle cracking. He also wore a steel rim around his forehead, the bottom part of a crown. Blood rivulets streamed from puncture wounds around the circumference of the head.
Ka-chunk.
The corkscrew dug deeper, the entry twisting meat, hair, and rendering fat spurts of blood. The man working the device wore a white lab coat. He used all of his strength to grind the device farther into the victim’s head. His back was turned, and Craig couldn’t see his face.
Ka-chunk.
The room stank of death. Wet leather and copper. He observed in the darkened shadows the outline of other corpses. They were strewn in piles five high, twenty bodies thick. They were all wrapped in straightjackets. Blood stained the floor and gurgled and belched down a drain.
Ka-chunk.
“I’ve got another one!” the man cheered. “Another brain for the pile, Danny-boy. We have to work faster. There’s not nearly enough of them for our studies.”
The operator wrenched back the giant screw and the skull cap and half of the man’s head was uprooted. He twisted the steel cork back, rung by rung, until the brain slithered from the metal coils and into a plastic receptacle.
