Musings From A Demented Mind (9 page)

                The Compound, 2684

“They are breaking through are defenses!”  Jepkins reported.

“The tranzer’s ready,” Marty reported.

“I’m ready,” Garth said as the tranzer spun faster producing a large gateway.

The door to the compound burst open.  Garth jumped through the gateway followed by Kendra and Jepkins.

“Melinda, go now,” Marty yelled as he was shot in the chest by a laser blast.

“Marty!” 

A tall muscular man in red metallic armor pointed his laser rifle at her.  She jumped through the gateway before he could fire the blast. 

Before the man could jump through the gateway after her, he was shot in the chest.  A group of soldiers led by Garth and Jepkins rushed into the compound and shot all of the invading soldiers.  As the enemy was defeated, Melinda and Dave walked into the room behind them.  Melinda ran over to Marty.

“You made it back,” Marty said.

“Don’t move” she said as their doctor tended to his wound.

“Who is this?”  Marty asked, looking at Dave.

“This is Dave, my husband.”

“Husband?”  Marty asked.

“It’s a long story,”  Melinda said and told him the story about going back to 2015 and returning to 2068 months before the events that just transpired in the compound.  “We didn’t know who the enemy was so we had to wait for them to attack the compound.  During that time, Dave and I fell in love.  Now we are back in time, meeting for the first time and falling in love all over again.”

“Now that’s a time loop worth being stuck in,” Dave said and kissed Melinda.

“Agreed,” Melinda said with a smile.

            Musings From Derek’s Mind

                       
BUZZ KILL

“Julianne, I need you to take these garbage bags to the dumpster out back,” Antonia Martinez, the grocery manager of Super Savings grocery store, ordered.

Julianne gave her a dirty look as she walked away from the sink in the backroom where she had just dumped a bucket of dirty mop water.  She was very short with long blonde hair with orange highlights.  With her tiny frame and fair pale skin, she was constantly hit on by customers and her co-workers.  She didn’t mind, because she loved all the attention.  It helped with her low self-esteem.  She walked over to Antonia and grabbed the two garbage bags.  She walked out the receiving door without acknowledging her. 

She walked down the concrete ramp leading to the dumpster.  A guy was standing in front of the dumpster digging through the garbage looking for food he could salvage.

“Can I help you?”  Julianne asked.

“I think I found what I needed,” the man said, never looking at her.  “I was just leaving.”  He got in his truck and drove away.

“Damn freegans,” she said as she threw one of the garbage bags into the dumpster.  A bee flew out of the dumpster causing her to run backward in fear.  It chased her for a second and then flew away in the opposite direction.  Her heart beat fast with fear.  She was allergic to bees and normally she would carefully throw the bags into the dumpster without incident.  She cautiously walked back to the dumpster and threw the second bag in.  When she was finished, she walked back through the receiving doors.

“Are you ok?”  Marlena, the receiving clerk, asked.  “You are breathing heavily.”

“Yes, I just had an encounter with an angry bee.”

“If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.”

“That is just a myth,” Julianne said angrily as she walked past her.

Jason, the stocker working in the organic section, waived at her as she walked out onto the sales floor.  She walked over to him. “Hey, slacker!”

“Me?  A slacker?  I never see you stock anything.”

“That’s because I’m a bagger.”

“Definition of bagger: one who stands around and does nothing all day,” he joked.

“And gets paid the same as you,” she said, laughing as she walked away.

Jason watched her walk away.  She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.  He was obsessed with her.  All the walls in his room were filled with posters he made of her from pictures he downloaded off of her Facebook page.  He spent every night dreaming what his life would be like if she was his wife.  He had a sinister smile on his face as he fantasized making love to her in the back of his red minivan.  One way or the other, she would be his; willingly or unwillingly.

Julianne walked over to the dairy department and faced all the product on the shelves making the department appear to be full.  As she heard her name on the intercom, she walked to the front to bag some groceries.

“Julianne, Jason’s staring at you again,” Roberta, the cashier for the register she was bagging at, warned.

“Him, he’s harmless as a kitten.”

“I think he’s creepy.  With his hairstyle and the way he walks and talks, he reminds me of Norman Bates.”

“More like Napoleon Dynamite,” Julianne laughed.

“Girls, we’re here to work, not chit chat.  We don’t have conversations like this in front of customers,” Deana, the front manager, warned.

“Sorry,” Julianne said to the customer waiting in line.

“It’s ok.  I thought it was amusing,” the elderly lady, buying a lot of Fancy Feast, said.

George Thomas watched as the dock loaders of Kellville Bees filled the back of his open semi-truck with boxes of over four hundred bee hives.  He was going to transport millions of bees to Mason’s Blueberry Farm.  It was taking them longer to carefully fill the truck with the hives.  If he was going to get the delivery to its destination on time, he would have to drive a little faster than normal when he got on the interstate.  He hoped the traffic wasn’t going to be backed up due to the construction they were doing on the left lanes on the interstate. 

“We’re almost done,” one of the loaders assured him.

“It’s about time,” he said impatiently.

“Be careful transporting them,” the loader warned.

“I will.”

After eight long hours of bagging groceries and facing up all the aisles, Julianne’s shift was over.  She was exhausted.  Except for the two fifteen minute breaks, she was on her feet the whole time.  She wanted to get home and take a long soothing bath.  As she was walking out the store, she spotted Jason standing nervously by her car.  Was he going to ask her out? She went over all the reasons why she couldn’t go out with him and decided which reason she would kindly give him.  She didn’t want to date him, but she also didn’t want to hurt his feelings.  After a minute of thinking, she walked over to her car.

“Julianne,” he stuttered.

“What’s up, slacker?”

“I was wondering if you would go out on a date with me.”  He was staring at her feet, never making eye contact with her as he asked.  She felt nervous as he asked her out because the way he did it reminded her of Norman Bates.

“Jason, you’re a nice guy and I like you as a friend.”

“A friend?” He seemed very agitated by the word friend.

“Besides, I’m seeing this guy.  He’s a freshman in college.”  As she was speaking, she was fumbling for her keys in her purse.

“I see,” he said sadly, still staring at her feet.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she pressed the unlock button on her keypad.  As she reached for the door, he grabbed the back of her head and slammed it into the driver’s side window of her car.  She fell to the ground unconscious.

“Get out of the fast lane, granny!”  George yelled as he drove down the interstate.  He could see the sign directing traffic to move to the right lane.  The cars in front of him were slowly merging into the right lane almost causing a bottleneck ahead.  The car in front of him stopped abruptly to avoid hitting the car ahead of it.  He swerved to avoid a collision and forced the car to the right of him into the railing.  He lost control and jackknifed his truck.  As the cab of the truck hit the concrete barrier on the left, the trailer slammed into multiple cars spilling all the boxes containing the bee hives all over the interstate.  

Blood was trickling down the side of George’s face as he slowly climbed out of the cab.  He was covered in bees and his skin was beginning to swell.  He felt the bees stinging him.  As he screamed, several bees instantly flew into his mouth stinging his tongue and the inside of his mouth.

As all the cars stopped to avoid the massive pileup building up ahead, they were being covered with bees.  Those who unfortunately had their windows down or vents open were being swarmed by bees.

Julianne slowly opened her eyes.  She had a massive headache and was having a hard time adjusting to the light.  She tried to move her hands but she could barely move them.  As her vision cleared, she could see her hands were handcuffed to an old wooden bedpost.  To the right of her was a dirty window with a rotten frame.  In front of her was a large metal door with a small wooden desk in front of it.  The ground was concrete.  She could barely lift her legs a few feet, because they were tied down with rope.  To the right of the bed she could see light shining through a golf-ball sized hole in the middle of the wall which was rotted. She could smell motor oil.  She was in someone’s garage.

“Help!” she screamed.

No response. 

After a few minutes of screaming, she gave up.  The last thing she remembered was trying to get into her car after the awkward encounter with Jason.  She looked around the room hoping to find something close she could free herself with.  She was secured tightly. Even if there was something she could use, there was no way she could get to it.  She tried listening, hoping to hear somebody outside the room, but the only thing she could hear was the humming from the fluorescent light above her. 

She thought about all the horror films she watched over the years.  None of them ever had a happy ending.  She pictured all the graphic scenes from the Saw movies and began to cry.  She tried to regain her composure.  She didn’t want to go into a panic attack while handcuffed to the bed.  She looked down and realized she wasn’t wearing the uniform from work.  She was wearing a fancy red dress.  Jason had undressed her and put her in the dress while she was unconscious.  She tried not to imagine what else he did to her, but she had a vivid imagination.

“Stop it,” she said, trying to erase the images from her mind.  “You have to be strong.  You can get out of this.”

“This is Randy Pacini reporting from I-80/94.  As you can see from the wreckage behind me, a truck carrying millions of bees jackknifed sending swarms of bees in every direction.  I’ve been stung once and my camera man has been stung twenty times.  We are now reporting from a safe distance.  As you can see, bee keepers are trying to salvage as many of the hives as they can.  They are urging people to stay away from I-80/94 and to those stuck in the traffic jam to keep their windows up and vents closed.”

“Jason, that’s not too far from our house.  You should stay inside where it’s safe.”

“Mother, I have to go to work soon,” Jason said as he brought his mother a cup of herbal tea.

“Did you put enough milk in here?  I don’t like it when it’s bitter.”

“I made it exactly the way you like it.  You should turn the news off.  It will only give you nightmares,” Jason advised.

“I will after the weather report.  Now give your mother a kiss before you go to work.”

He kissed the side of her right cheek.

“You are such a good boy.  You’ll make some lucky woman a great husband.”

“Thanks, mom.”

Julianne tried sliding her tiny right hand out of the handcuffs with little luck.  She heard a car door slam.  A few seconds later, the door ahead opened and Jason walked in carrying an old, red plastic lunchbox.  He walked over to the side of the bed and sat down on the metal chair next to it.

“I brought you some food.  I know you’re probably hungry.”

“Can you take off the handcuffs?  I promise to be a nice girl.”

She was staring at him seductively. 

“Nice try, Julianne.  I’m not that gullible.”  He opened up the lunchbox and pulled out a small juice box.  He put the straw in it and put it in front of her mouth.  “Drink.  I don’t want you dying of thirst.”  She willingly sucked the juice through the straw.  “Now I want you to eat.” 

“Why are you doing this?”

“So we can be together like a loving couple.”

“It’s not real.”

“It is to me and that’s all that matters.”

“Don’t you care about my well-being?”

“Julianne, be a good girl and I promise I won’t hurt you.  You’re safe here.”  He offered her a peanut butter sandwich and she bit into it.  “Small bites.  I don’t want you to choke.”

After she had finished the whole sandwich and drank the rest of the juice box, Jason grabbed a book off of the wooden desk and sat down next to her.  He read the book aloud to her for thirty minutes while she tried not to cry.  He put the book on the desk and then kissed her on the top of her head. 

“I have to go to work now.  Unfortunately, I think one of their baggers will be a no show.”

“They’ll know I’m missing.  My car’s still in the parking lot.”

“They’ll never suspect me.”  He walked out of the garage.  A few seconds later she heard his car drive away.

She wept for several minutes.  She looked down and spotted a bee sitting on her dress.  She tried staying completely still hoping it would fly away.  She turned her head to the right and saw several bees crawling through the hole in the wall.  She could feel something crawling on her head.  She didn’t know if her mind was playing tricks on her or if a bee was actually crawling through her hair.  More bees crawled through the hole.  Within minutes, the whole wall was covered in a swarm of bees.  She watched in horror as hundreds of bees crawled through the hole.  Within half an hour she was completely covered with them.  She was paralyzed in fear.  She could feel them crawling all over her face.  She tried not to open her mouth.  She could feel a tingling sensation in both her ears as they crawled inside.  She could feel her skin swell from being stung.  Within seconds she could no longer see through the bees covering her eyes.  She was in complete agony from the pain from the swelling until she felt a complete numbness going through her body and then unconsciousness.

Jason parked his car in front of the garage of the abandoned house long forgotten in the woods near I-80/94.  He and his friends discovered it when they were kids and used it as a hideout for several years.  As he got out of his car, a bee landed on his arm.  He looked at it.  He never saw a bee out this late before.  Normally at this time of night, they were inactive.  He flicked it away with his finger and walked toward the garage.  He walked in and dropped the bag of tacos in shock.  Julianne was standing in front of him completely naked.  The handcuffs were sitting on the bed ripped in half and the ropes looked completely chewed through.