Authors: Alan Spencer
“Being in the moment heals, Mr. Horsy, like facing your fears, living your regrets, changing your past, that’s how one copes with life. I’ve barely scratched the surface of your treatment, Mr. Horsy.” He put his fingers together. “My father called this part of the treatment ‘shock therapy’.”
He waved his hands to prevent Craig from speaking. “No, I won’t send electrodes into your skull. That’s along the lines of those false alternatives other doctors offer. I might as well resort to bloodletting or pouring ice-cold water over your body to shock the anger out of you. No, I’ll do things to your mind you won’t understand. It takes the threat of death to make one appreciate their lives and cope with their past. Yes, you can die during this treatment, Mr. Horsy. Clinically dead, Craig—I won’t lie. Many do perish during these exercises. You’re a danger to society, and the reasons are as volatile as the treatment. If you overcome my procedure, you’ll be worthy of mixing with the world again.”
“
I’m not a danger to society!
” Craig balled his hands into fists, appalled at the ludicrous explanation. “I made one mistake. Yes, my childhood was fucked up. I’ve joined the club, Dr. Krone. Willis was a mistake, my only mistake, you lunatic. I’ve listened to you, and you’re the one who needs to take your own medicine, not me. You can’t keep me here. I don’t want to be here.”
This was the defining moment he was waiting for, the actual truth. Dr. Krone had kidnapped him. He was hooked to a machine, in God-knows-where, under the control of this madman. Now the man admitted he could die. It came off as a promise. He wasn’t safe. The gut feeling was correct. The man and his female assistant were criminals. He was helpless in his mind.
How could he escape a place without an exit?
Desperation sent him to his knees. He clutched a flap of the doctor’s lab coat. “Just let me go, okay? I’ll forget any of this happened. I’m sorry for what I did to Willis. It’s a mistake. Send me to jail if that’s what it takes. I can’t take any more of this memory shit. It’s too much.” Throwing his head back and unleashing a wild roar, “
Let me out of my mind!
”
Dr. Krone kneed him in the chest. The connection forced the air from his lungs, and it took him a moment to relearn how to breathe, sprawled out on the ice.
“What is it that you’re after, really?” Craig gasped, the winter’s cold suddenly setting in. Whatever protected him from the elements before had suddenly been lifted. “Why did you pick me?”
“I’m not allowed to practice legally,” Dr. Krone confessed, shaking his head as if consoling himself. “My father wasn’t either after his breakthrough. Stripped of his license, actually.” He mulled the question over longer. “You interested me more than the rest in the stack of files. Your history, your potential, I couldn’t resist treating you. There’s nothing like being inside you, Mr. Horsy.” He stared at him with big eyes. “I can fix you. My father wanted to cure people with this machine, as do I.”
“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.”
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.