He convulsed and postured as the sudden seizure ravaged his body, forcing him to bite his tongue and writhe as if holding the bare end of a live extension cord.
CHAPTER 1:
My tongue felt like someone had taken hold of it with a meat-tenderizing mallet or some other equally heinous implement of destruction. Whatever it was that had happened, at the moment, the salty tang of blood was effectively presenting its unmistakable flavor to the few taste buds that remained intact.
My head was throbbing too. Well, maybe not so much throbbing as imploding and exploding all at once. I knew full well that such was a literal impossibility, of course; even so, that was what it felt like all the same. It didn’t take long for me to realize that trying to think about it too hard made it hurt just that much worse, so I accepted my brain’s knee-jerk comparison as a cold fact and left it at that.
Additional sensations began sneaking in through the tiny fissures in the pain that was hammering my skull; each of them petitioning to be heard, felt, and otherwise experienced to the fullest. Unfortunately, none of those sensations were any more pleasant than the one occupying center stage at the moment.
Given my current inventory of pains, the only somewhat neutral feeling I could identify was linked directly to the right side of my face. In fact, at this very moment, my cheek was reporting back to me that it was firmly pressed against something hard. What that something was, I had no idea, but it was definitely hard… And if my inner ears weren’t deceiving me, it was horizontal… Not to mention wet. Overall, it was not an exceptionally painful feeling, but it was most certainly uncomfortable. Still, combining the uncomfortable with the excruciating and then multiplying it by a healthy measure of confusion- well, when you did the math, it all pretty much took on the same properties, none of which could be considered any more desirable than any of the others.
I wondered for a moment if the wet portion of the present feeling was, in part, the blood I thought I tasted. It seemed logicaclass="underline" it was wet, warm, and in the vicinity of my face. Unfortunately, I was forced to abandon the whole idea with urgent haste in order to escape the sharp stab of pain in my skull that the simple act of wondering about it had invoked. Apparently, at this particular moment, my brain wasn’t much interested in logic or anything else for that matter.
Between throbs, I noticed that my forehead felt cold. Not just cool but actually flat-out, ice pack cold. It was the only portion of my head that wasn’t embroiled in pain at the moment, but judging from the sensation it was announcing to me, that might only have been because it was well on its way to numb. Of course, it hurt to think about that too.
It occurred to me that there was something else just as disturbing as the pain. A pair of something’s actually: One, I had no idea what had happened to me in order to bring about this level of agony; and two, I didn’t know where I was. If I actually knew the answers to the two questions, I couldn’t remember them, and that wasn’t good either. I briefly considered the idea that I might be able to obtain one of the answers simply by opening my eyes. However, considering and doing are two different things entirely, and it seemed my eyelids weren’t listening to my brain right at this moment.
My vision wasn’t the only sense that was nullified either. Up to this point, my auditory nerves had apparently been on vacation somewhere in the land of white noise, as all I seemed to be hearing was a nondescript roar in my ears. The good news was that they now returned from their sabbatical, in a manner much like a radio being switched on and the volume being turned slowly upward. A distant voice began echoing down the hollow tunnel that was my hearing, and even though the simple act of concentrating brought with it an overtone of pain, I strained to make out the words.
The voice sounded male, young, somewhat tinny, and was coming across as no more than a garble of meaningless syllables. The distorted edge of the voice competed for my attention through the warbling hum that still invaded my ear. I swallowed hard and steeled myself for the added aches I feared that I was about to bring down upon myself, and then I concentrated harder.
Another mish-mash of sound worked its way into my ear and with each beat morphed from the unintelligible into a Doppler distortion of noise that whistled past me, only to fade quickly away. I seemed to recognize some of the clamor as words. However, what registered was, “…to be a badly decomposed human arm.”
I pondered the incomplete sentence and decided that I was hallucinating, because I just knew the voice couldn’t have actually said ‘decomposed human arm.’
My addled brain locked in on a piece of the distant voice once again. “…have confirmed finding more remains in a shallow grave well off the path.
“While there has been no confirmation as yet, there has been speculation that the body may be that of…”
The sharp taste of metal suddenly filled my mouth, overpowering the salty blood that had dominated the sense moments before. Every muscle in my body tensed at exactly the same moment, pulling up like rubber bands stretched to their limits and then tugged just a little farther for good measure. I could feel my teeth gnashing against my already tortured tongue once again as my body shuddered uncontrollably through some manner of violent seizure. My face took on a fresh ache as I felt my eyes rolling back in my head.
A vague memory wandered through the maelstrom of my thoughts, and I realized I had been here before. At a different time certainly, and even a different place, maybe. I wasn’t sure about the latter, but the fact remained that this was not something new.
I could feel my consciousness starting to flee, and I wasn’t so sure that it was a bad thing. However, the split second before it managed to exit, the elastic strands that were my muscles and tendons released. Without warning, they snapped instantly back to relaxed positions- or, as relaxed as they could be under the circumstances. Thankfully, the abuse my tongue was taking from my teeth stopped as well.
I felt limp, weak, and maybe even a bit more disoriented than I had been before if that was possible. I took in a deep breath and laid near motionless; panting as a distant ring echoed in my ears then faded into a low buzz that eventually became a voice.
“… From the Major Case Squad have arrived on the scene and will be taking over the investigation from municipal authorities. Back to you Chloe and Russ.”
There it was again, that distant, tinny voice.
This time it had said, “Major Case Squad.” Then it said, “Chloe and Russ.” Now, these things actually made sense. A by-product of that sense was an answer to one of my earlier questions.
Maybe.
From the sound and content, I thought that what I was hearing might be the audio from a television newscast. A partially revealed memory lumbered through the inside of my skull, and I took hold of it.
I was watching the morning news at home in my living room before heading upstairs to my office and getting to work. I got up from my chair during a commercial break and went into the kitchen. I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee, then turned and went back into the living room.
After that, the remembrance grew a bit fuzzy around the edges. Well, actually it was completely obscured from my view because the real truth was that I had absolutely no idea what had occurred in whatever span of time had elapsed since I had poured that cup of coffee.
Still, maybe I wasn’t hallucinating as I’d earlier thought. Of course, if I could get the rest of the memory to come into some kind of focus, I might get a better handle on my current situation.
The thud in my skull was actually starting to subside, for which I was more than grateful. The bizarre in and out thrum, however, continued rumbling in my ear, competing with the sound of the television. I started taking stock of the other sensations and happened across the fact that while my forehead was freezing, my neck was actually warm- very warm. In fact, it was downright hot.