Bo shook his head in an attempt to try and clear the muzzy feeling threatening to overwhelm him and looked over at the precise moment the man on the ground started to roll over and the sheriff lost his balance. The deputy lunged and pushed Guiteriz out of the way as the sheriff started to fall within easy reach of the ICE agent.
The sheriff rolled without any semblance of grace through the dust and sand. By the time he looked back, his deputy had finished cuffing the mad man and was seated on top of his back to
keep him from rolling any further.
*****
(Hi again! It’s me Bill the author of this somewhat spellbinding tale.
I truly and sincerely beg your pardon for this narrative interruption. It's highly unprofessional and unprecedented, but I'm afraid it's necessary before this tale can end. Sometimes horror stories end extremely badly for the characters, other times things sort of work out. I am sorry to inform you that this tale has both conclusions.
Those readers who like relatively 'happy' endings should simply continue reading. For those of you who prefer a very sad messy horrific conclusion click the following link.
Horrible
* If for some reason the link fails to work properly the conclusion is the last thing in this book. It’s not terribly long but very disturbing.
I realize many of you will probably read both endings anyway, but I wanted to offer you the choice. This choice option reminds me of paperbacks I used to read way back in the olden days of the 1980's that were called Choose your own path, or something to that effect.
And now with no further interruption, here’s the exciting and considerably happier conclusion of Southwestern Road Trip.)
*****
Bo’s uniform shirt had multiple bloody pinpricks where the cactus needles had embedded themselves in his skin under the material and he was swaying slightly atop his struggling prisoner. But he was smiling nonetheless as the other deputies who had been rappelling down the hillside finally arrived on the scene.
*****
From an overhead speaker on the ceiling the public address system played a few soft chimes before a woman’s voice announced that visiting hours would soon be over. Megan looked up from the magazine she'd been bored enough to try and read. Her eyes appeared to have sunken considerably since the wreck and the thick dark marks under them were hard to not notice.
Her father thought she looked somewhat like a raccoon, but chose not to share his opinion with her. Instead, from the other side of the waiting room he continued talking quietly on his cell phone. “No, please believe me, mom, there’s no need for you to fly out here. I talked to the doctors and they said Janet should be released in a few days. I’ve got a hotel reservation here in town for Megan and me.” He looked over at his daughter with eyes that appeared haunted and dropped his voice to little more than a whisper before saying, “I plan on having Edwin’s body shipped home tomorrow. I don’t know why, but they said an autopsy was needed.” He sniffled while listening to his mother for several seconds before saying, “No, mom, please don’t call any attorneys. I don’t want to make waves. Right now, I’m just grateful Janet and Megan are going to be alright.”
He wiped at his eyes and cleared his throat before adding in a strained choked voice, “No, mom, I haven’t told either of them about Edwin yet. They’ve been through too much.”
Megan stood up and tossed the six month old rumpled sports magazine down on the uncomfortable leather waiting room couch. She was tired of listening to her dad trying to explain to her grandmother that things would be okay. The girl leaned out through the archway leading to the hospital hallway and spotted the two same policemen standing by the nurse’s station that had escorted them to the waiting room. Both men had been polite but very official sounding when they explained that for the time being they couldn’t leave the hospital. She crossed over to the window and tried to ignore her dad’s whispering voice.
Albuquerque is a pretty town, she thought looking over the twinkling lights below, but I just want to get back to Sacramento. I sure hope Edwin’s arm can get fixed up. It looked so gross. I guess I’ll probably have to be nicer to the little twit, at least until his arm’s better. She smiled slightly at the thought of Edwin and wondered why they let her see her mom but not the booger eater. She thought about the cops and everything that happened since the wreck. None of this makes any sense.
The sheriff had talked with her dad and she overheard some stuff about how a dangerous escaped mental patient, that happened across their wrecked car in the desert, had chased the wolves away. But even though her dad seemed to buy the story, the little girl had her doubts.
When Megan had been helped out of the SUV she saw some people wearing odd looking space suits taking away the supposed mental patient. The letters CDC had been written on some of the space suits and she wondered what it could stand for. Crazy Department Cops?
She looked at the bandage on her arm, with its grinning image of Bugs Bunny, and wondered why the doctors had taken so many blood samples. Megan saw her dad had a bandage as well on his arm and crossed the waiting room again. Peeking back at the nurse’s station she noted the policemen were facing the other way and talking to a lady behind the tall counter.
Tiptoeing, she crept into the hallway and headed away from the nurses and police. She was more bored than tired. The TV in the waiting room only showed a repeating cartoon red heart preaching about the importance of regular exercise and eating lots of fruits and vegetables every day. Besides, maybe I can find Edwin. I bet the little twit’s still pretty scared, she thought while sneaking down the wide brightly lit hallway.
She saw a bunch of multicolored balloons floating near the ceiling in a room that had an open door and paused to look inside. A woman about her mom’s age was sleeping in a big chair, and sitting up in a bed there was a blond boy who appeared a little older than her. He was watching a TV mounted on the wall near the ceiling and eating some cake that looked delicious. She felt and heard her stomach rumble.
The boy must have heard it too, because he smiled over at her and whispered, “Hi, want some birthday cake?”
Megan nodded and went into the room.
The boy had sad sunken eyes that reminded her a little bit of a raccoon. He gestured to an enormous chocolate birthday cake that was on a narrow table which had wheels under it. “Help yourself. Whoever brought it must have thought I was a pig or something.”
“Is it your birthday?” Megan whispered back as she took a large slice of cake and put it on a plastic plate.
“Yeah, well I guess for the next few hours it is.”
“Happy Birthday. My name is Megan. What’s yours?”
The boy smiled in an oddly sad way and said, “I’m not supposed to talk to anyone or tell them my name. It’s all top secret stuff, but I’m Billy.”
Someone cleared their throat behind the girl and the boy instantly leaned back in his bed and badly faked being asleep. Megan turned around and saw a grumpy policeman frowning down at her. She nodded at the officer and carried her plate with the big piece of cake out but whispered back to the boy, “Thanks for the cake, whoever you are.”
The boy smiled and made a somewhat loud melodramatic and very unconvincing snoring sound while keeping his eyes tightly closed.
###
Fortunate Cookie
By Sarah Bebb, with marginally helpful assistance from her dad
“Come on, forget about it. Let's go, if we don't get home soon mom's gonna be pissed!” The freezing boy yelled to his younger brother, who was still trying to find the baseball they had been playing catch with all afternoon.
“But Jaden, I've got to find it! She'll be even more upset if we lose another ball,” he yelled back to his big brother, who was already heading for the sidewalk.
“Just hurry up! If you get sick mom's gonna blame me. Besides, we can always get another ball.”
Realizing that his older and sometimes wiser brother was probably right, the boy looked a
way from the pile of leaves and muck he'd been foraging through and ran off after him. A brief movement caught his attention and he came to a stop and stared up at the window of the condemned house next to the vacant lot where they'd been playing.
“What in the world are you doing now, Kyle?! Come on man, I'm freezing my giblets off!” Jaden yelled impatiently from the sidewalk. “You know no one lives in that crumbly old place. What are you looking at?”
“I saw the curtains in that little window move. Really, they did, I'm not kidding,” Kyle said defensively, noticing his brother's skeptical expression.
“So what? It could have been the wind or some dirty drunk guy. Now hurry up or I'm leaving you here. And if mom asks, I'll just tell her that you were eaten by stray dogs or something. I'm sure she won’t miss ya,” Jaden said smugly, trying as hard as he could to get his easily distracted little brother to hurry back home with him.
“Okay! Okay, I'm coming! Just don't leave me all by myself, please,” the younger boy said in a scared voice whilst rushing after his brother.
As they left the outskirts of their hometown behind them and hurried towards the twinkling and reassuring lights of Naperdale, neither of the two boys looked back once and missed the curtains shifting once more.
Inside of the dilapidated mold-reeking house, a little girl who was about the same age as Kyle gazed longingly at the duo that she had been watching play for the last few hours. A sharp pang of jealousy and anguish shot through her small malnourished body as she watched them trotting down the sidewalk. She felt certain they had a loving caring family and a warm comforting place to call home. She quickly closed the thin curtains and drew the blinds shut. Night was falling and there was nothing more to see.
The little girl coughed weakly as she trudged silently across the cold wooden floor in the attic. Her much too small scratchy blanket felt a bit like sandpaper to her porcelain pale frigid skin. But as long as it kept just a tiny bit of body heat within her she didn't much mind the unpleasant mildew smell that permeated it. Shivering constantly she climbed up on the decrepit and musty sofa. It was the only furnishing in the attic other than a ramshackle old wooden desk that was missing three legs, with all of its drawers located in the corner of the room and a pile of torn up books filled with words she didn't know how to read in another.
The sole belonging other than her uncomfortable blanket was a pink and yellow flower patterned backpack that contained various treasures she’d found on her little expeditions to the town a few blocks away from her 'home'. On her last trip she'd been lucky enough to find some discarded Chinese food remnants in a trash bin, still in their take-out containers.
It wasn't warm food, of course, but the starving child hastily devoured the cold clumpy rice and hard greasy chilled beef as if it were a Thanksgiving feast. She was truly thankful because it had been a long time since she'd found such a good meal. The last time was when she'd discovered almost half a pepperoni pizza in another bin a week ago. This meal wasn't nearly as delicious, but as long as it quieted her constantly growling stomach she didn't much care.
Whoever the Chinese meal had belonged to evidently had no time for such trivial things as fortune cookies, since there was still one in its plastic cover inside the box. She quickly tore the wrapper off and cracked open her cookie. Since she couldn't read very well, deciphering the message inside was a bit of a challenge. As she gnawed the delicious shards of brittle cookie, the little girl struggled with stubborn determination to sound out the sentence.
“Good things are coming in the…the...” she whispered before giving up.
The phrase Good things are coming in the- was a relatively easy one to understand, but it was the rest of the sentence that she was having trouble deciphering. Try as she might, she simply could not read the two remaining words.
Giving up on the endeavor, she tossed the small piece of paper on the dirty floor and sighed deeply before finishing off the last spoonfuls of icy cold rice. Placing the now empty box on the floor beside her backpack, the girl pulled her blanket as far up over her little head as she could.
The winds outside were blowing fiercely and she heard large branches smacking against the roof of the house like the hands of agitated giants. She shut her eyes tightly. She was frightened, but was exhausted as well and her sore throat felt as though it was filled with small shards of broken glass. With a brief series of weak coughs she soon fell asleep despite the agonizing pain.
She soon found herself in the midst of a wonderful, almost magical dream. Instead of the cold stained smelly sofa in an old decaying house; she was lying down on a large soft beach towel on the sandy shore of a beautiful tropical seashore. The sun was shimmering brightly in the sky as the ocean's waves crashed on the sand in perfect rhythm.
Strangely, aside from her, the beach was completely deserted. She didn't mind though, she was perfectly content just laying there all by herself enjoying the warm sun overhead.
Just as everything seemed too good to be true, she suddenly noticed a glowing humanoid figure floating above the water. It was a very great distance away and although it seemed to be coming towards the coastline at a frighteningly quick pace, the girl paid no mind to the mysterious figure. She was much too happy and alive to be worried about something that was probably just a sort of mirage or a similar illusion.
After what seemed like just a few more minutes of relaxing, she began thinking about the glowing figure once more. Afraid that it may have gotten closer to the shore by now, she opened her eyes a bit to see if the figure was still hovering above the ocean but it was nowhere in sight. Relieved, the girl tried to relax again, but it seemed that her mind had other plans.
It must have only been my imagination, but still maybe I should get up and take a bit of a look around. Maybe there's some kind of food here -- preferably something I won't have to dig out of a smelly trash can. With that thought, she began to stretch but was horrified to discover something was holding her down on the beach towel. She writhed and squirmed to get free but it was no use. “Help! Someone, please,” she cried out. “I'm stuck to this stupid towel!”
Just as those words left her mouth, the sky grew dark with a quick flash of lightning. She could barely see the edge of the ocean. The changing atmosphere was almost startling, as the once bright and sunny skies were now completely dominated by fierce black rolling storm clouds. Thunder rumbled loudly and flashes of lightning lit up the darkening sky every few seconds. In the distance but steadily growing louder the sound of raindrops smacking down against the water like thousands of tiny bullets competed with the deafening noise of crashing thunder.
Then the rain poured down upon her. It felt like she was drowning in it. It was the worst sensation she'd ever experienced. The water was incredibly shockingly cold and the towel that she was still held against was getting soaked as the sand around her began to melt and sink down around it. She felt herself being pulled down while the palm trees that dotted the beach were falling one after another into the sand with a series of wet squelching thuds.
As she struggled not to be sucked under the wet clingy sand she spotted the last tree still standing located directly behind her. She shut her eyes and wept. Her tears mixed with the rain as she knew when the tree fell, it would inevitably fall right on top of her. With an incredibly loud crack of thunder, the tree was struck by an enormous bolt of lightning. She shut her eyes tighter as the smell of harsh burnt wood assaulted her pert tiny nose. Everything in the world grew dark.
*****
“Aaaaahhh!” the girl screamed, sitting bolt upright on the sofa. She quickly observed her surroundings; same old creaky window, same uncomfortable blanket, same dreary abandoned old house. The entire thing had just been an awful nightmare.
Relieved, the girl rolled over and smiled. Now that the danger had passed she could go back to sleep. Minutes passed, then hours (at least that's what it felt like to her) and yet she still didn't feel the least bit drowsy. And even though she had eaten a re
latively large meal before going to sleep, she still felt empty inside. It was like her entire body was hollow, not just her stomach. When she fell asleep she'd felt freezing cold, but now she only felt vaguely numb and empty. She couldn't describe the feeling, but she was sure that it wasn't cold. She knew that feeling all too well. The closest she could relate the feeling to was when she’d once fallen off a stone wall that lined the playground and felt temporarily paralyzed.
She groped around a bit until she found her backpack, digging around inside it until she found what she was searching for– gummy bears. She found a tiny bag of them around Halloween, but had been saving them for a night when she really needed them. Ripping the plastic wrapper open, she took out a green coloured bear and popped it into her mouth. She began chewing as soon as she had released the candy from her grip, but strangely her mouth was completely empty. Well... maybe I dropped it.
She quickly drew out another gummy bear, this one was orange, and she was extra careful to make sure this one landed inside her mouth. But despite her best efforts, the orange bear had not landed in her mouth either. Confused and frustrated, the girl quickly jumped off her sofa and looked around for the two missing gummy bears. They hadn't fallen on the floor and they weren't in her backpack either. As far as she could tell there wasn't anything there but her various knick-knacks. The candies were nowhere to be found.
Dang it! What's wrong with me?! Is there a hole in my stomach, in my mouth?
She gripped her slender neck, but there was something that was definitely wrong with her. Her stomach sank as she slid her fingers around her face some more, desperate to at least be able to feel something. But try as she might, she could not feel a thing but cold air. “Wha- what's wrong with me?” she wondered out loud. In a deep dark corner of her mind she had a horrible sneaking suspicion but it was too hideous to even seriously contemplate.