The 11th Floor: Awakening (7 page)

“I can’t,” replied Luke.

“It’s a lot simpler than you’re making it,” said Nate. “Either you kill her and save your own life, or we will kill you both. Lou here is hoping you choose the latter. He’s wanted to kill you for quite some time now.”

“I’ll only give you one minute to decide,” Nate continued, “then you both die.”

From his jacket pocket, Nate pulled a small hourglass. He tipped it over and slammed it down on the table.

Luke stared Nate in the eyes,
then
looked back at Amanda. She was now crying. It was obvious to her that no matter what Luke’s decision, she was going to die. The tears flowed down her cheeks in a fairly steady stream. Lou pulled her closer, leaned in, and licked the tears off one of her cheeks with his disgusting black tongue.

“Tick, tock,” said Nate, with no response from Luke. “Okay, Lou, I think we have our decision. Mr. Williams’ silence here has sealed their fate. Do it.”

“Wait!” Luke shouted. “Wait. Okay. I’ll do it.”

Nate pulled a large blade from his jacket pocket, just like the last time.

“You need to use this,” Nate said, holding the blade out for Luke.

“First, I have some questions I need answered,” demanded Luke.

“I will allow two questions. Then you finish the job.”

Luke paused for a moment. He wanted to make sure he asked the right questions.

“Why do I wake up next to dead bodies?” he asked.

“As I told you when we first met months ago in that office building, we like to mess with people—torture them a bit as part of our game.
The dead bodies?
They don’t exist. We make you see them. They aren’t actually there. The same goes for the birds that fell from the sky. Remember how they just disappeared?”

“Okay. What about the list? How do people get on the list?”

“You’re wasting your questions. I also told you this when we first met. I don’t know the answer to this. The list comes from the big man downstairs. He gives me the list and we take care of the dirty work. We don’t question his motives for putting people on the list. All I can do is
speculate
.”

“So speculate for me,” insisted Luke.

Nate sighed, “The best I can figure,
the
people on the list must have grabbed his attention in some way or another. Could be crimes they committed in their lives, indifference to their fellow man, or good spirits that he wishes to break. Sometimes I believe that by taking some of these people, it causes misery and suffering to others, which is really his forte.”

“So that’s it?” Luke complained. “That doesn’t answer my question. I want another one!  You said you hadn’t seen a talent like mine in about 300 years. Who was the other person? Is it a name I would recognize?”

“I’m not going to answer that. Go consult your priest. Now enough of this, time to fulfill your destiny.”

Nate held out the blade for Luke to take.

“For it to work properly, you must use this blade. Don’t ask me why, it’s another question I won’t answer, I will just say that it is special.
”

Luke took the blade from Nate and held it close to his face. There were odd markings all over it, which he had never seen before. It resembled ancient Egyptian with a bit of an alien, other-worldly vibe.

With his arm still around her chest and his hand over her mouth, Lou pushed Amanda across the room toward Luke. Nate opened the desk drawer and retrieved a roll of duct tape. He approached Amanda, ripping off a large piece of tape, and placed it over her mouth.

She tried to scream between Lou removing his hand and the tape being placed, but all she could get out was “Luke!”

Once her mouth was taped, Nate went back to his desk. Lou continued to hold her arms behind her back, instead of his arm being around her chest. He pushed her down onto her knees so she couldn’t make a quick attempt at running.

“Now do it. No stalling, or so help me I will make your death as painful as possible,” said Nate, giving Luke a shove toward her.

Luke now stood in front of Amanda, holding the blade next to her face. He rotated it side to side so he could see the reflection of the overhead lights on the impossibly shiny, long steel blade. He reached out and grabbed a large portion of her hair and pulled it tight, slicing it off with the blade.

Amanda began crying even harder, tears running down her face. Luke took the piece of hair he had cut off and wiped her tears with it, like it was a rag, and then threw the hair down onto the floor. He grabbed under her chin with his left hand and lifted her head up so he could look into her eyes.

From behind the tape, she was trying to scream but none of it was intelligible, just a complete mumble of sound. Luke placed the knife next to her throat and hesitated.

Nate yelled out, “Now. Mr. Williams.
Now!”

With his left hand still under her chin, Luke pushed her back and threw her down onto the floor. In a seemingly fluid motion, he then turned and jabbed the knife into Lou’s chest and pulled the gun from his waistband and shot Nate twice in the head. Luke then turned and shot Lou in the head and chest. As Lou was falling to the ground, Luke pulled the knife from his chest. He then spun around, and with great momentum, threw the blade across the room into the chest of Nate.

Luke tossed the gun over to Amanda who was already pulling the tape off her mouth and said, “There are two shots left. Use them if you need to.”

Like some kind of master ninja, Luke then leapt through the air and over the desk toward Nate. His foot connected with the handle of the blade and pushed it the remaining way into his chest, knocking him to the ground.

“Luke!” yelled Amanda.

Luke turned and noticed Lou was trying to run away.

“The gun!”
Luke yelled to her.

Amanda tossed the gun to Luke. He snatched it out of the air, aimed, and fired the last round into the back of Lou’s head. He fell to the ground with a thud, creating a pool of blood around his body.

Amanda ran to Luke and threw her arms around him, “I really thought you were going to do it.”

“I’ve done some things in my life that I’m not proud of, but a murderer, I am not,” replied Luke.
“Oh, and sorry about the hair.
I had to make it look convincing.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Besides, if this really is a dream, I imagine when I wake up that my hair will not actually be cut.”

Luke laughed, which was promptly interrupted by a groan coming from behind the desk. He hurried over to the desk and jumped on top to observe Nate. Luke had left him lying on the floor bleeding and presumed dead. Nate was squirming and thrashing around, making all sorts of awful noises. His skin had changed to a dark crimson red. Small horns were now present on his forehead.

Nate opened his eyes and looked at Luke, then let out a burst of laughter so intense that it shook the walls. When the laughter stopped, he burst into flames. Now consumed in flame
s
, he didn’t burn as Luke would expect someone on fire would burn. Instead, his body
completely
disappeared, leaving behind a pile of ash.

From behind him, Lou began groaning. In the same fashion as Nate, he thrashed about, then burned up and left behind a pile of ash.

“Well. That was unexpected,” said Luke. “I guess it’s finally over.”

“So why are we still here? Shouldn’t we wake up now?” Amanda asked.

“I guess they weren’t the force preventing us from leaving. This is a dream world, so we need to wake ourselves up. I don’t know.”

“So how do we get out of here?”

“Well, the first time I jumped out a window,” replied Luke. “The falling must’ve woken me. Then, on the boat, I was thrown off the upper deck and into the water. So it seems like falling is the key.”

“Well, it makes sense. Every time I have a dream that I’m falling, I always wake up,” said Amanda.

“Right.
So going by that logic, I think we need to jump off the roof of this building. Six floors should be enough.”

“Should be? What if you’re wrong?”

“Okay. I’ll go first. You watch me. If I fall to my death, well, then we were wrong. If I disappear, or something, then you
follow
me.”

“Guess I don’t have a choice. Lead the way.”

Both of them went up the roof. On top of the hotel, they had an excellent view of the city. Granted, it wasn’t the tallest building around, but they were able to see some great landmarks from their height. Luke and Amanda both approached the edge of the building and looked down over the edge. There were no obstructions below to impede their plummet; just a nice straight shot down to the pavement.

“Okay, here goes. No point in waiting,” said Luke, as he backed up against the wall to get a good running start.

He took a deep breath and ran toward the edge of the building.

“Good luck!” yelled Amanda.

Luke continued running and jumped as soon as he came to the edge of the rooftop. A second later he was out of sight. Amanda waited for a few seconds with her eyes shut, but didn’t hear any sounds. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to hear, a splat or maybe a scream, but she heard absolutely nothing. She hurried to the edge and looked over.

“Oh my god!” she yelled, staring down at the pavement below. “He was freaking right!”

She walked back to the wall and took a deep breath.

“Here we go,” she said with a sigh.

Just as Luke had previously done, she ran with great speed and once at the edge of the building, she jumped.

Behind her, a voice called out, “We’ll see you again real soon, Ms. Higgins.”

The voice behind her was timed perfectly. She turned her head to see who was calling out to her. A fraction of a second before she was too far past, she saw them. Nate and Lou were standing near the edge of the roof, grinning, waving goodbye as she fell.

Luke calmly woke up in bed and looked over the bedroom wall. He instantly recognized it as his own apartment, and let out a sign of relief.

“Well, that was interesting,” he said as he sat up in bed.

He hurried out to his doorstep and snatched up the newspaper. He pulled off the rubber band and uncurled the paper as he closed the door.

He stared at the front page for a few seconds, but found nothing in the headlines. Luke grabbed his laptop and sat down at the table with it. He visited the websites of all the major news outlets and was only able to find one that mentioned anything about a death in Las Vegas. An old man in his 70s had passed away from an apparent heart attack. A maid found him in his hotel room, lying on the floor, clutching a pair of thick glasses. No foul play was suspected.

“The old man from the hallway.
It has to be,” said Luke. “That means it was real.”

Luke sat for a second, contemplating the consequences of the dream being real.

“Her. That means she is real too,” he said. “What was her name again? Amanda. Amanda what…”

Luke closed his eyes and concentrated. Remembering dream details was not an easy task. He realized he should start keeping a notebook next to his bed, like a sort of dream diary.

His eyes shot open, and he yelled, “Higgins! Amanda Higgins!”

Navigating over to Google, he did a search for “Amanda Higgins Las Vegas.” No results were found.

“Duh,” Luke said to himself. “She probably isn’t from there either.”

He typed in another search for Amanda Higgins, this time without specifying a location. Lots of results were returned his time. In fact, too many results were returned. He decided to do an image search instead, in hopes of recognizing her picture. Sure enough, on the fourth page of results, there she was. The image linked to her Facebook profile, which was marked as public. According to her wall, less than an hour ago, she had posted about having the scariest dream of her entire life.