Deception (A Miranda Murphy Thriller) (16 page)

Was this insane bitch going to leave her alone tonight?

“I wanted to warn you,” said Kathy. “Don’t touch the bullets. You should not touch the bullets in the glove compartment of your car, Leslie.”

“Okay. I won’t.”

“It is very important. Did you take the bullets out of the box? Please be honest.”

“No, I didn’t touch them. Why would I do that? And why does it matter?” Leslie shifted her eyes from the road to the glove compartment. She suddenly felt a chilly heaviness in her temples and the back of her head caused by the realization that there had to be a very compelling reason for Kathy advising her not to touch the bullets.

“Well, we’ll find out soon enough.”

“What will we find out soon enough?”

“Just leave them where they are, don’t open the box.” 

“Okay, okay.” Leslie had trouble remaining calm. “But you didn’t answer my question, Kathy. What are we going to find out?”

“There’s some stuff on those bullets. It kills a person your size within twenty minutes of contact. If you touched it, you don’t have much time left to live.”

Even though Leslie was aware of her being inside the car, with little wiggle room, with the belt gently pressing her to the back of the seat, Leslie found herself in a free fall. She could literally sense all solid matter vaporize from under her and--down she went.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Leslie moaned.

But she, of course, knew what Kathy was talking about. Her temples had grown much heavier, her vision began to blur, her heart was throbbing in her chest. It was poison working its way to her muscles, nerves, and brain.

“Don’t touch the box. I can come over and pick it up in the morning.”

“Is there an antidote?”

A few silent seconds passed before Kathy responded:

“Yes, there is. But you have to administer it within five minutes after you get this compound on your skin. Ten minutes at most.”

Leslie breathed out a tired groan. It had been at least fifteen minutes now since she had put the bullets into the magazine.

“Leslie, can you hear me?” the walkie talkie crackled. “Are you there?”

Leslie angrily pushed the green button.

“What do you want?”

“I think I know what you did.” A pause. “You took those bullets out of the box, didn’t you?”

“Fuck you! Fuck you, cunt!”

“I’ll be honest with you, Leslie. I am glad it ended the way it did.”

Leslie closed her eyes.

#

#

And then came contentment.

There was at least one thing she could be happy about in the final moments of her life. Her death from poison would prove to every pathetic soul out there who had doubted her that she had been right all along, that she had not been a crazy paranoid.

The End

 
The following is a sample of Tim Kizer’s horror novel “Days of Vengeance” (about 106,000 words).

“Days of Vengeance” description:

First, his wife went missing.

Then he lost his memory.

Now he has to remember where he buried the body.

Frank Fowler is having a bad year: he is about to remember that his wife's family is a gang of sadists controlled by a monster...

With the last six years of his life wiped out of his memory, Frank begins to suspect he may have murdered his wife Kelly, who went missing shortly before the car crash that caused his amnesia. While struggling to remember his wife and the events surrounding her disappearance, Frank is shocked to find out that Kelly's family has the same suspicions as he does.

Things take a darker turn when he realizes that his in-laws will stop at nothing to make him remember what he has done to their beloved sister. The situation gets even more complicated as an anonymous blackmailer accuses Frank of the murder and demands money to keep his mouth shut.  As memories trickle back to him, Frank is still unable to figure out why he slaughtered his wife and what happened to his accomplice. He is not even sure he has nothing to do with the disappearance of his young daughter, who went missing a few months earlier.

Frank's search for answers becomes a fight for survival after he rediscovers that his wife's relatives are a clique of bloodthirsty serial kidnappers serving a mysterious one-legged man. His chances of prevailing are slim: one of the in-laws is a cop and another is a multimillionaire.

However, the question still remains: Why are these people so hell-bent on getting hold of Kelly's dead body?

His options are limited: he either finds his wife--dead or alive--or dies. In his race against time Frank has all the clues to the puzzle, he just needs to remember them before it’s too late.

The novel is currently available for $0.99 on Amazon kindle
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006SPQRFS
.

Please visit Tim Kizer’s website
www.horror-suspense.com
for more news.

Tim Kizer

Days of Vengeance

Chapter 1.

DREAM

1.

The note read: “Dear Frank, I know you killed your wife, and I can prove it. You are a reasonable person. I’m sure you don’t want to go to prison. All I need is a $20,000 loan. Please think about my request very carefully.”

But before this, the last six years had been wiped from his memory.

Then there were darkness and dreams...

2.

Owl. Owl. Owl? This word flickered at the edge of his mind for a few seconds and then vanished. Frank somehow knew that it was not the word he’d been trying to recall. His very life depended upon this important word buried deep inside his memory, and he had to fish it out as soon as possible if he didn’t want the one-legged man and his people to cut his throat. He had no idea who the one-legged man was. Sometimes he doubted this man actually existed.

The word sounded similar to ‘owl.’

He would give it another shot later. Right now, he would like to focus on something else. Those dreams. Yeah, on those amazingly vivid dreams.

Frank had been having bizarre dreams while he was in a coma. When he regained his consciousness, he did not remember their contents. As a matter of fact, he was not even sure he’d had any dreams at all.

Very hard. Really damn hard! It was so hard to open his eyes. To unglue his eyelids, which, as he had begun to suspect, must have been sewn together, otherwise how could one explain the fact that he had been trying to put them in motion for ten minutes now (or maybe ten days), and they had not budged one bit?

Then two flashes of recollection lit up his mind. First, Frank remembered that there was a steel-plated safe holding a body the one-legged man’s people would love to get back. He had no clue where he’d hidden it. Within seconds, this memory disappeared into the ether.

The second flash was one of those strange dreams.

Frank remembered seeing a man who stood by the bathroom door, collecting his thoughts. The man clasped a nine-inch long knife in his right hand, but Frank knew he was nursing a hope that he would not have to use it. Strangle... He would prefer to strangle her.

Frank could also see a woman in the bathroom. She was in the shower cabin, carefully rubbing soap on her shoulders, forearms, and breasts, firm jets of hot water massaging her back, her hands sliding smoothly on the soft lather. The man wrapped his fingers around the knob, turned and pulled it, swore at himself—this door opens inward, idiot!—and then began pushing the door slowly until the gap became wide enough for him to see the woman.

The woman’s progress was easy to observe since the bathroom fans had been doing a great job of venting most of the steam out. The man asked himself if he should wait until she finished showering. The answer was no.

The woman turned around towards the showerhead and remained in this position for a while as the water rinsed the front of her body. Then she grabbed the shampoo bottle and squeezed some of its contents into her palm. She seemed preoccupied with the task at hand and would have hardly noticed if someone had sneaked into the room, especially with all that mist on the shower door. After gently lathering the top of her hair, the woman poured more shampoo into her palm and applied it to her hair in the back.

The man gathered his courage and finally stepped over the threshold. He quickly shut the door behind him so as to prevent the draft of cold air from breaking into the bathroom and thus alerting the woman. Frank still couldn’t discern both the man’s and the woman’s faces—they were the only blurry spots in this vivid dream—but at the same time he had a feeling he knew these people very well. The man stood mere feet away from the shower cabin, watching his target massage the shampoo into her scalp. He was excited she didn’t see him enter the room. Lucky for him, the woman usually closed her eyes when lathering up her hair, which meant he had the surprise factor on his side, just like he’d hoped. Now there was a chance he wouldn’t have to hear her ear-piercing scream after all.   

With a pleased smile, the woman breathed in the hot steam, letting it warm up her nasal passage and lungs, as her hands slowly moved from her forehead to the back of her head, her fingers digging into the shampoo foam in circular motions. She obviously enjoyed taking shower.

Hiding the knife behind his back, the man made the first step towards the cabin. Through the water jet noise, he heard the woman start humming some tune, and he froze for a second to shake off the momentary doubt that he would be unable to yank that bitch out and accomplish what he had planned. She’d better shut up and quit distracting him! He inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth and quickly calmed down.

The tune reproduced by the woman was Dancing Queen by ABBA. Like millions of other people, the woman loved singing in the shower, where there were no critics or gawkers.

With her eyes still shut, the woman stepped closer to the showerhead, allowing the water to rinse her hair. As the shampoo lather streamed down her naked body, she kept humming Dancing Queen, while running her fingers through her locks. She was enveloped in puffs of steam, the water noise drowned every other sound in the bathroom; oblivious to the world outside the foggy shower door, she didn’t see the man approach the cabin.

3.

The memory expired as abruptly as it had come to his mind. A few seconds later, he only had a vague idea of what the dream had been about. And the memory of the one-legged man had vanished completely.

 So, one, two, three. He was summoning his strength. Summoning his strength. He had to open his eyes. And here was the light. His eyelids finally opened. Focusing, and...

A woman's face. Perhaps, he should go to the bathroom and wash his face and brush his teeth. He also did not want to be late for work. By the way, where did he work?

“Mister Fowler,” the woman said in a low voice, putting her warm palm on his hand.

Lying in bed was pleasant. The woman’s palm was very warm, as if it had rested on a hot towel for a while before landing on his hand. He had no desire to get up. It felt as though he had grown into the bed, become part of it. The woman was apparently kind. Kind as a mother.

He moved his lips apart and forgot to register how difficult this action was because all of his attention was drawn to the face of the kind woman clasping his hand. His right hand. Or was it his left hand? Damn, which hand was she holding?

“Mister Fowler, if you can hear me, move your right thumb.” A pause. “Move any finger if you can hear me, Mister Fowler. Hang on a second. I'm going to get the doctor.”

Yes, sure, he could hear her. He moved (or so it seemed to him) his right index finger. Yes, it was the index finger on the hand the woman was squeezing. He wagged it with sufficient amplitude so that the woman would easily notice the movement.

“Hang—” the woman fell silent after seeing his finger twitch, which meant he had actually moved it. “Very good, Mister Fowler. I'll get the doctor.”

As she rose from the chair, she poured a pleasant sweet smell over him—everything coming from this woman was pleasant. Then she left the room, her heels knocking softly on the floor. Or maybe it wasn’t her heels. Now he wasn’t even sure he had heard the knocking.

Knocking? And what about breakfast? Or was it time for lunch?

Or dinner?

“Hello,” he whispered. He realized it had been a whisper and wanted to believe he had intended to whisper that word, but in reality he had been going to shout it. The sad fact was his vocal folds were not up to the task at the moment. Right now he sounded like a punctured balloon.

“Hello.”

You might as well just keep silent, buddy, considering that your voice is so faint. It’s as if you are afraid of waking up a little child. Yeah, keep silent, man, don't make people laugh.

After the last thought had fully formed in his mind, there was another fleeting memory flash—the final half of the dream.

He opened the shower cabin door. The woman was applying conditioner to her hair and was completely absorbed in this task when he grabbed her by her left arm. To his surprise, she didn't scream. He attempted to step inside the cabin, but the woman managed to push him out. However, it was too early for the woman to celebrate because he pulled her out of the shower as he stumbled back.

He lost his balance, they fell down on the floor, and he began to strangle her, holding her torso tightly with his left arm and crushing her throat with his right forearm. The woman was kicking, wiggling, and scratching his arms as she tried to writhe out of his grip. They rolled over, and the woman found herself on top of him, but it didn’t help her one bit. His grasp remained firm and his arm kept blocking the air from entering the woman’s windpipe.