A Few Minutes More

A Few More Minutes

Dana felt it—a gritty movement in her throat under his thumbs, a faint, almost audible vibration as the cartilage of her trachea was fractured and crushed. Her eyes drifted away from her abductor, his body pinning her to the floor. She watched her left hand release his shirt and fall limply to the floor, joining the other that previously struck at her tormenter. Her legs had stopped their thrashing, her feet their pounding. The killer was still leaning forward with crushing pressure, gasping, and groaning, his spittle leaking down onto her face in long strands. But her throat no longer hurt. Nothing hurt, numbness engulfing her. Dana just wished she could move her head away from his drooling spit. Her mind wandered and grew darker…

     With a grunt, the man dragged the woman’s dead weight over to the old leather couch parked against the wall of his basement. She was tall and, although slim, must have weighed a good one-hundred thirty-five pounds. He positioned her limp body in an upright, sitting position and put a throw-pillow behind her neck to prop up her head.

The killer retrieved the young brunette’s purse and sat in a chair facing the dead woman, their knees almost touching. He rifled through her wallet and pulled out her driver’s license. Laughing, he shook his head. “Dana Ryan Sanders,” he murmured. “Really?” Then louder, “Dana, Dana, Dana, did your parents want a boy and get you instead? Is that why you’re stuck with such an ambiguous name…?”

      He leaned forward, resting rested on his elbows. “But I digress. First, let me introduce myself, Dana. My name is Norman, and I will be your tour guide for the next few minutes.” He had to pause while he giggled uncontrollably, picturing the things he had in mind for his “tour.”

      He regained control and refocused, his eyes attempting to penetrate her empty ones staring back. “I know you’re in there, screaming in the darkness. I read somewhere that after the heart ceases to pump and the lungs stop with the oxygen—in short, after you die—there’s still enough residual oxygen in the blood for the brain to survive another four, five, maybe even ten minutes. You’ve read the stories. If someone dies and you can revive them within a few minutes, they’re A-Okay. A little longer, and you have irreversible brain damage. Longer still, and it’s kaput. They call it hypoxia. And during your little tour, you’ll have a lasting sense of what’s happening to you, to your body. An experience to take with you into that absolute darkness—unstoppable and as horrific as I can make it. That’s what makes this all so worthwhile.”

     Norman looked at her, frowning; Dana’s mouth was hanging open. He reached out and lovingly pushed up her lower jaw. “Irene, my mother, always said you’d catch flies with your mouth hanging open like that.” He snickered. Norman did not want to think about her—his dead, loving mother. It would spoil his and Dana’s few minutes together.

     He shuddered, shook his head, and brought himself back. “So, Dana, what’s it like in there?” He grinned and shook his head. “I know everything’s on the fritz now. Your central nervous system has shut down, and those synapses aren’t firing in the ol’ brain anymore, are they? Are you waiting for the last of the oxygen to run out? Praying for the brain to die while you teeter on the edge of that long journey into the abyss?”

     No response from Dana, sitting silently in her blue shorts, her red blouse torn open from her struggles with Norman, gazing off into nowhere. She was beautiful, even in death. Norman licked his lower lip, staring at her. He would have a few more minutes of fun with her body.

     He leaned forward again. “I’m sure you still have an awareness of the outside world, not merely darkness and horror. I think you are aware of everything I have done and, even more importantly, will be aware of everything I will do to you during the next few minutes.”

     He sighed, leaned back, and looked at his watch. “Well, Irene… ah… Dana, the oxygen will soon start run out in those brain cells, and the real dying will start.” Norman swallowed and brought his increasingly rapid breathing back under control. He had killed her physically, but imagining her final, terror-filled death on the inside while he exacted his latent revenge, was even more exhilarating.

     Several long minutes later, Norman heaved Dana’s dead and abused body over his shoulder and headed out the farmhouse’s back door into the twilight of a West Virginia summer evening. Norman had dug the grave earlier. He wasn’t worried; his one hundred and ten partially wooded acres were isolated, his nearest neighbor over five miles away. He hummed a tune. He felt good; this had been fun.

#

It was a tsunami of biblical proportions. It stretched forever to Ryan’s left and right, tapering in perspective until land, sky, and water met at a single, disappearing point in each direction. The liquid mountain towered upward, a massive concave wall of water, blocking out the horizon and all but the sky directly overhead. Ryan stood frozen before the impossible gray flood, paralyzed by the impending assault. As its shadow slowly consumed her and its crest loomed above her, Ryan could see a myriad of dark shadows swirling and swimming in its bowels.

Now the monstrous wave was crashing down on her, thousands of tons of water crushing her, the churning shadows fragmenting into thousands of memories, shattering into bits and pieces of her life. Ryan struggled as the debris swirled around, pinned to the ocean floor by the monstrous weight of memories. 

Each fragment, each piece that touched her, was a small electric shock, bringing a scrap of memory into sharp focus. Places, people, things. Playing hide-and-seek in their backyard when they were five. Tent camping at a KOA campground with her parents. Christmas morning, in the dark, crawling under the Christmas tree with a flashlight, checking the names on all the gaily wrapped presents and dividing them into their respective piles of “ownership.” Later, in high school, trying out for the cheerleading squad. Their parents’ funeral. Thousands of memories whirling around her in the grayness, touching and coming into focus briefly before fading away. The tears, laughter, sorrow, and joy of her life. Staccato, machine-gun bursts of memories overwhelming her.

But new, strange memories and hazy pictures alien to her life were now juxtaposed with the old in the swirling brew engulfing her. The jumble of unknown, horrific images and sensations bombarded and stunned her before disappearing back into the churning deep.  

Ryan couldn’t breathe. She struggled for air as a larger, darker shadow touched her, shocking her into a brilliant light. Something, someone was crushing her. A man was atop her, pinning her down, choking her. Ryan struggled for freedom, for air, failed, and gagged. A man’s crazed face filled her vision and her mind, his words and spittle raining down on her—slimy wetness congealing in the water. She continued to fight, thrashing, struggling for breath, but failing, weakening, weakening, fading, dying… dead. 

But she didn’t die. She stopped breathing, and her heart stopped beating. Ryan could no longer see, feel, hear, or smell. She could no longer struggle. But she knew—she was aware. It was as if all the pores in her body took the place of her senses, soaking up information somehow and feeding it to her still alive brain. She was inside and outside her body, could “see” from both places simultaneously. There was no physical pain—only psychological, psychic terror. And the knowledge that she was dead, her mind knowing within a few short minutes that, it too, would slowly begin to die, the light inching its way to an eternal blackness. But this wasn’t good enough for the monster atop her.

Foul, disgusting words flooded her mind, from his mouth flowing through her, into her. Now he was biting, ravishing, pushing things into her body through every opening. Ryan couldn’t stop screaming in horror, disgust, terror, her screams silent and unnoticed—because she was dead. Eventually, mercifully, her mind began to die, but her screams wouldn’t, couldn’t stop. The monster continued to defile her body, all the while talking, talking, talking. Images became hazy, darkened. She could sense movement. Fading now, the last sentient awareness as the final few cells expended the last of their vital oxygen, was the sense of dirt falling on her—as she screamed and screamed her way into the great abyss—

Ryan bolted upright in her bed, gasping and gagging, another scream catching in her throat. Her sweat-drenched tank-top clung to her, hair plastered wetly to her head. Propping herself up on her elbow, she leaned over the side, dry heaves wracking her body. Gulping convulsively, she brought herself under control and flopped back onto the bed, breathing heavily, eyes squeezed shut in horror and overwhelming grief, escaping tears inching down her cheeks.

#

Other than the bartender, they were the sole occupants of the seedy bar. Sergeant Jack Kroner looked at his shivering and quaking friend with concern. Ryan had called him, frantic, making little sense, but managing to give him her location. Ryan’s pallor was gray hued, a sheen of sweat glistening her skin; strands of damp hair clinging to her forehead. He wasn’t sure what ailed her, but knowing Ryan, it wasn’t drugs. His best guess was his friend was exhibiting a hysterical response to an unknown trauma and was now in the crash and burn phase.

The off-duty cop grabbed a handful of napkins from its metal holder and dabbed at her face. She was coming around, now appearing no worse than your typical drunk. He turned and called to the barman. “Hey, buddy, bring me a glass of water and a couple of wet washcloths.”

A minute later, the nervous barman delivered the items to the table, introducing himself as Howie, the owner.

In return, Jack showed him his sergeant’s badge. He emptied his wallet—a little over a hundred dollars—and handed the money to the bar owner. “I’d like to reserve your establishment for the next half-hour. That’s to cover any lost revenue. If it’s not enough, I’m good for the rest of it. Okay?”

Howie stared at his only two patrons for several seconds, then took the money. “Yes, sir.” Curious, he squinted at the woman. “I thought she was a drugged hooker from uptown when she first came in.”

Jack shot him a warning look.

Howie became defensive. “I mean, she has nice clothes, but she looks sorta messed up.” The comment earned him another dagger-look from Howie. The barkeep decided to change tack. “Sorry, is she going to be okay?”

The officer ignored the bartender’s question. “You’d better get us a couple of shots of your well-whiskey, with beer washes.” Shaking his head, he reconsidered. “Better make those doubles, Howie.” Jack reevaluated Ryan, retrieved a Visa card from his wallet, and handed it to the man. “Well, Howie, I think I may need your bar a little longer. Let’s say for two hours. Figure your lost sales and put it on the card.” He managed a poker face as he surveyed the empty room.

 The owner went to the door, locked it, and flipped the sign from “open” to “closed.” “You got it, boss,” he replied, smiling.

After Ryan managed to choke down the two whiskeys, her color returned, and she visibly calmed. She wiped her nose with a napkin and looked at him with a sad look. “I’m sorry, Jack, I must look and sound a mess.”

A smile creased his rugged face. Jack was 16 years older than the young woman’s 28 but had a boyish crush on her. “You’ll always be beautiful, Ryan, and I’ll always be your friend. Now, what the hell is going on?”

Ryan hesitated and took a deep breath, composing herself before beginning, her voice low. “You’ll probably think I’m crazy, but I had a vision, or premonition, a nightmare, of things happening to me… my death, I think… a very horrible and gruesome one.” Ryan paused, memories clouding her dark eyes.

Jack waited several long seconds before prodding, “You’ll have to be a little more specific, not so ambiguous—”

Ryan inhaled sharply. “What? What did you say?” she interrupted.

“You mean about your being so ambiguous—”

“Ambiguous… that’s the word the killer used… ambiguous.” Ryan looked bemused.

Her mind raced backward, sorting through the myriad images, words, and fragments inundating her just a short time ago. Her mind reflexively tried to shy away from the terrible sights and sounds, but she forced herself to look, hear, and feel again.

     Jack opened his mouth to say something, but Ryan reflexively held up her hand, stopping him.

Finally, she found the thread. It was after the murderer had strangled her and carried her to the couch. He was sneering at her, talking to her, and she was somehow hearing through her dead body. The madman said she was ambiguous… no, that wasn’t right. She searched and latched onto the moment. His mocking voice echoed in her mind, “Dana, Dana, Dana… did your parents want a boy and get you instead? Is that why you’re stuck with such an ambiguous name…?”

Ryan pulled herself back to the present and stared at her friend in anguish. “But I have no proof,” Ryan said, hiccupping, tears in her eyes.

She had utterly lost Jack. “Proof of what?” he asked, perplexed. “You were going to tell me about your premonitions and nightmares before you went silent for the last minute or so.”

“It wasn’t a vision of my impending death. It was Dana’s.”

“I don’t understand, Ryan. I thought Dana was traveling in Europe, seeing the world after her nasty divorce.”

Ryan shook her head, picking up speed, willing her friend to keep up. “In my nightmare, from what I could see, she’s back, was murdered, and is now buried in a southwestern state.”

“Whoa, girl, you’re losing me again.”

Ryan, exasperated, sighed and leaned back in her chair, staring at the table.

Jack recapped. “So, what you’re saying is you had a nightmare about, what you thought, was your death. Upon further consideration, you decided that it was really about the murder of your sister somewhere in the Southwest, even though she’s supposed to be in Europe. And you believe this, without any proof other than this dream.” The big cop shook his head in confusion. “Ryan, you are one of the most intelligent people I know, but this is really a stretch.”

The disheveled woman leaned forward, arms on the table, her tears overflowing. “Jack, if you could have seen what he did to her… I saw and felt it all. I think Dana’s thoughts were projected to me, showing me what and where it was happening. Remember, she was my twin sister.”

Jack retorted, “You no more resemble her than a regular sister, and your personalities are definitely dissimilar,” he countered.

“That’s because we were the result of the rare phenomenon called polar body twinning.

“Huh?” Jack was still grappling with the idea of the visions.

Ryan raced on, “Doctors theorize that polar body twinning occurs when the mother’s ovum splits before fertilization, the resulting pair fertilized by two separate sperm. The outcome is semi-identical twins, both having the same genes as their mother but acquiring different genes from their father. I don’t understand it any more than the doctors do.” She took a sip of her beer. “But I have no proof other than a jumble of images, not only of the horrible event itself but bits and pieces of our life. It was like an exploding info dump those moments after she died. It will take me a while to sort everything out.”

The battle-scarred cop stared at his slightly mussed and babbling friend, trying to understand everything.

“Jack, I have no solid proof of any crime. All I have is your belief and trust in me. If I have that, I’ll need your help. I have to find him. His name is Norman.”

The cop’s fingers rhythmically drummed the tabletop. Jack looked at Howie behind the bar, lethargically wiping the counter. His eyes continued to travel over the empty room before returning to the hopeful woman across from him. “You have it. When you get those images sorted out, I have a lot of accumulated vacation time. Then, we can go hunting for more concrete evidence of the murder.”

Ryan reached across the table and took Jack’s hand, silencing its nervous drumming…