excerpt:
It
was one in the morning and I had a golden opportunity for revenge. I couldn’t
help myself. I took her to the lab. She was not too drunk to walk up to the
third floor, but she was definitely too out of it to realize that my telling
her to lie down on the ‘massage table’ was not going to end well for her.
I
chose that day’s date and some random coordinates close to what was already on
the screen. What did I care?
Poof,
the bitch was gone. And nobody was going to think anything other than that she
ran away from home.
I
locked up and stepped outside. The dark monastery in the middle of the woods
was creepy enough after midnight, but before I could open the car door I heard
far off shrieks, like the sound a rabbit makes when a bobcat pounces. The
screams were faint at first, then frantic. And human. I grabbed the flashlight
from the car, pushed the gate all the way open and ran for the path to town.
Between the ghastly moonlight and the fairly strong beam in my hand I followed
the trail to the rusty car. The cries were growing less frequent.
“Help
me.”
Erica
was impaled on the bumper of the old vehicle. Part of her left leg was buried
in the ground along with her left arm up to her elbow. She looked like someone rising
out of bed, but sinking down at the same time. Blood dripped into the dirt.
I
choked back bile to keep my hysteria at bay. “Shh, I’ll get you out. Stop
screaming.”
I
searched around for something to dig with and used a couple of sticks to free
her leg and arm from the ground. I pulled on her to help her stand and the
shriek that pierced the night was unearthly. A rusty shard of metal broke off
and more blood gushed.
“I’m
so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” I really was. She didn’t deserve what was
happening to her, not for being mean to me, or for being a bully, or anything.
But what could I do? She’d seen the time machine. Even drunk she had to realize
she traveled from the lab into the forest, into the ground actually, by
incomprehensible means.
I
tore off my shirt and tied it around her, hoping to stem the flow of blood. I
needed her to walk back. We got halfway back before she dropped to her knees.
She’d soaked through my shirt and neither of us could hold enough pressure on
the wound.
“I’ll
carry you,” I said. I bent down in front of her and told her to climb on my
back. She managed to keep her legs around my waist all the way to the lab door,
then she gave up. I dropped the flashlight and used both hands to lug her all
the way up to the third floor.
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