13:17: PARANORMAL THRILLER (Time of Death) Read online

  I nearly choked. “Twenty THOUSAND?” I asked. “How in the hell does he owe him that much money?”

  “Will said that ‘sales have been slow.’ Around here, sales don’t get slow. He can move just about anything we give him if he tried.”

  My gut tightened and I nearly puked. My best friend. The best friend I’d had my entire life, grew up with, had sleepovers with, graduated with, then fell in love with… He was a – drug dealer?

  “You didn’t know?” Shawnee asked. She laughed. “Apparently, you ain’t as cool as he said you are. He doesn’t tell you shit.”

  For once, good ol’ Shawnee had something right. He hadn’t told me shit. I had no idea he was mixed up in anything like that. He never acted like he was stoned, high, fucked up, or any other combination of words there were for it. Hell, I didn’t even think he smoked pot!

  The shouting got louder then. It wasn’t calming down. It was escalating quickly. There was a loud crash, and I jumped up from my seat, heading for the door across the room.

  “Don’t go in there!” Shawnee yelled, grabbing my hand and pulling me backward.

  “I have to make sure he’s okay!” I said, pulling away and bolting for the door.

  Opening the door, I saw something I never in a million years thought I’d see on that particular day. It was supposed to be a great day. I woke up, had a cup of coffee, said cup of coffee was a bit too much that early and made me sick, felt better and later had breakfast, called my friend, planned for paintball… See where I’m going with this? It was a normal fucking day!

  I stared across the room at Big Guy – AKA Jay. He was standing no more than five feet away from barrel to Will. The gun pointed directly at Will’s head.

  “Please,” Will said. “I’ll get the money. I’ll sell all of it.”

  Jay looked over and saw me standing there, probably as pale as Irish out there and my eyes the size of flapjacks. Flapjacks. I should have told Not-Shawna my name was that. If she’d asked me then “what the fuck kinda name is Flapjacks?” I then could have looked at her and excitedly said, “I know, right? Where did that even come from? Who is Jack? And why is he flappy?”

  My damn thoughts again… Never too far away, even in danger.

  “I don’t think you will,” Jay said, still staring me down.

  “I’ll help him,” I blurted out without thinking.

  “Mia, no!” Will called out.

  Jay smiled. “Actually, I think she’s onto something here. You aren’t nearly motivated enough.”

  “I’m very motivated. I swear. I’ll get the money,” Will said. “I still have all of it. It’s not like I’ve been using it or giving out freebies. I just haven’t sold it. I can give it back to you if you have someone that would do better. Please just keep her out of it.”

  “I don’t want the product,” Jay said. “I want productivity.”

  Oh. Big word. I wasn’t sure anyone around here spoke with those.

  “I can! I will!” Will exclaimed.

  Jay smiled again, looking from Will to me. “I think you’re right. I think you’ll be much more motivated.”

  And with those short few words, the gun was fired. Directly into my chest. At first, I didn’t feel anything. I just looked down at the blood soaking the front of my shirt, shocked beyond all reason that the day had taken such a sharp turn. Then I collapsed to the floor.

  ~ ~ ~

  My eyes opened wide, another sharp intake of breath threatening to kill me. I stared in the mirror, unable to look away.

  Impossible…

  My eyes…

  They were glowing. They were turning from blue to red, but the red seemed to glow. The outermost part of my iris jet black, as black as my pupils. My breathing picked up as I felt a sharp pop in my chest. Had my heart exploded? What the hell was that?

  I wanted to scream, but the pain was so terrible that I couldn’t even manage a sound. It was taking all I had just to breathe. Looking at my chest in the mirror, I saw the unbelievable taking place. My ribs and my sternum were moving by themselves. Each side of the sternum coming together, the bone grinding against bone. The sound was horrible, but the stabbing agony was worse.

  How did it happen? Within seconds, the bones were fused back together. I watched as new bone grew, melting each side in place as it should have been all along, not even a scar to show for it. Next, the skin began to pull. This time, I did cry out.

  I heard something hit the floor from behind me. How I hadn’t seen their reflections in the mirror, I didn’t know. I must have been totally focused on the unnatural thing happening before me. Two women, nurses or medical students, stood in the room, staring at me. I could sense their fear and it seemed to radiate off of them. One started to run.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  She did as I asked. Her compliance was immediate. Absolutely no hesitation made. She didn’t speak, nor did she scream. She simply stood exactly where I’d told her to.

  “You can’t leave,” I said. “I need help!”

  The woman that had never moved spoke then. “What do you need help with?” Her voice was calm, smooth.

  I didn’t know what to say. They were following my every direction.

  “Something’s wrong. The doctor pronounced me dead, didn’t he?” I asked.

  The runner turned to me then. “He did. At 13:17.”

  “That is a time I’ll never forget,” I said.

  “What can we help you with?” Runner asked.

  “My chest,” I said. Even as I looked down the skin was healing. The incision had already closed and the scarring was growing smaller and smaller. “What’s happening to me?”

  “We don’t know,” the other woman said. “We’re only medical students. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

  I had to come up with a plan. Even if it had only been momentarily, I had died from a gunshot wound. I needed to get out of there before I was cut into again and experimented on.

  “I need both of you to help me out of here. Um…” I was thinking on my feet then. I had no idea what I was doing.

  Looking down, I saw the things they’d dropped. There was a stack of towels and some sheets.

  “I suppose that you’re here to clean me up and take me to the morgue. Is that right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Runner said.

  “Okay. Well, that’s what we’re going to do. Give me some wet cloths, so I can start cleaning myself up. Then you’re going to cover me with a sheet and take me to the morgue. I’ll figure things out from there.”

  “But if we do that, then everyone will continue to think you’re dead. That means you can’t go back to your old life when you leave here,” the other woman said. “Your family hasn’t yet been notified, but they will be once you reach the morgue and the paperwork has been filed.”

  She had a point.

  “True dat. Okay. Ideas? Ladies, we need to get moving here before someone comes in here and sees a zombie moving around,” I said.

  “Are you? A zombie, I mean,” Runner asked.

  “I have no idea what the hell is going on right now,” I said. “I could be, for all I know, but I’m walking and talking for right now, so let’s just go with it.”

  “We could stitch you up,” the other woman said.

  “What?” I asked. “I think it’s a little late for that.”

  “We could stitch you up. We could say that when we came in here you’d managed to free yourself and were pulling the tube out. We can say that we immediately closed you up and have moved you to post-op. You’ll have to endure a physical, though. So, just act like you’re in a lot of pain,” she said.

  “That’s not going to work. Her chest is completely closed. It’s perfect. There is no incision,” the runner said. “Putting sutures along the incision line isn’t going to do anything.”

  She had a good point, but if I was able to telepathically control people then the stitches, pointless as they were, might go a long way in making it easier for me to
force a doctor see a real wound there. If there were no stitches, I’d have to make him to see an incision and stitches. That was honestly the craziest problem that I’d ever had to find a solution for. I was grateful for the help.

  They were very quick, though they were going around in circles. They didn’t seem be the least bit concerned with the situation, minus their desire to come up with a solution for me. They didn’t act as if they questioned what was happening at all. I looked at them, needing to know if I had full control over them. I needed to know if they stopped out of fear, curiosity, or if it was something greater than both.

  “If I told you to kill yourself, what would you say to me?” I asked. I felt sick for even asking, but I had to see the reaction.

  “Is that what you want? If that’s what you want from me then it would be my pleasure to make you happy,” Runner said.

  My eyes widened.

  “Absolutely,” the other said.

  What… the…

  “Okay. Good to know. No one is killing themselves today. I want both of you to live long happy lives. That is what would make me happy,” I said quickly. “As for the issue with the doctor, I think I can manage. I’ll give it a shot. I just have to figure out how to trigger this mind-controlly thingy. Telepathy?”

  “Actually, I think it’s called compulsion,” Runner said. “Seems to me that fear did it. You saw me running and assumed that I’d run and tell everyone what I’d seen.”

  I nodded. “I suppose that could be true. There is only one way to find out.”

  “Do you really want to risk it?” the other woman asked.

  “We don’t have time for a plan B. I need to be able to go back to my old life. I can’t just sit around and watch everyone I love from a distance. Family comes first for me. Just fading away and watching my mother and father suffer is not an answer.”

  “Then tell us what you need us to do. We’ll help all we can,” Runner said.

  I nodded once again. “First thing’s first… I’m going to need you to stitch me up.”

  Chapter Two

  The girls wheeled me into recovery and I did my very best to look as miserable as possible. They put another IV in, put a blood pressure cuff on me, and did their best to make me look like a real patient. One of them was an excellent makeup artist and used some of my blood to create a clean, scabbed over incision to go along with the sutures. It looked quite real unless you stared at it… or if you were a surgeon. I still wasn’t convinced this would work, but it was worth a shot. I really hoped he wouldn’t want to look too close or touch it.

  “I suppose now it’s time to inform the surgeon,” I said.

  “Yep. I think so,” Jen, the med student formerly known as Runner said.

  “Lie still and act like you’re sleeping. Slow your respirations if you can. Look as groggy and exhausted as possible. Complaining about pain wouldn’t hurt,” Catherine, the other med student said.

  “Thank you, ladies. And, my little secret is safe with both of you, right?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” Jen said. “We wouldn’t say anything.”

  I liked them. It was a shame that they only liked me because of whatever strange hold it was that I held over them. I sighed.

  The girls left, and I did my best to look passed out. My decision to go this route was definitely a gamble, but I couldn’t go to the morgue and have them call my family. Once I was in the morgue I’d be dead. It was final. The whole plan was so dangerous. The odds of it working were slim and I found myself wanting to run. Fast.

  Something brushed across my chest, and I jumped. My eyes snapped open and I realized that I’d actually fallen asleep. My body was sore, even if it looked to be healed. It wasn’t hard for me to seem like I had a lot of discomfort. I grimaced as I moved.

  “You are quite a miracle,” the doctor said.

  “Seems that way,” I said.

  “My students told me that they found you fighting for your life when they came back to prepare you for the morgue. There wasn’t a question in my mind while I was working on you. You were gone. The bullet caused so much damage that you bled out when I removed it. It was one of the worst cases I’d ever seen. We gave you so much blood, but it kept pouring right back out. I tried closing the open area, but it was hopeless. The tissue was weak from the damage and kept blowing back open. I truly don’t understand how you came back, but… here you are.”

  He stared at me like I was magic. Technically, I guess that I was.

  “This is by a wide margin the craziest day of my life,” I said. “There are a lot of things going on right now that I don’t understand. All I want is to get better and go home.”

  He smiled. “Well, it’ll probably be a few days at least before you can go home.”

  Oh, hell no. I wasn’t staying there for days.

  “Right,” I said, trying to think of what to do next.

  “I’m going to do a full assessment on you. My students told me that they already did, but I want to do one for myself. I need to check their work. Also, I just can’t resist. You’re a miracle! I see miraculous things happen often in my work. I don’t know what you believe, and whatever that may be is perfectly fine, but I have my own beliefs, too. God is everywhere. But you… Young lady, you are something special. I don’t know the specific situation that led you to be in my care today. Meaning, I don’t know if you normally find yourself in those situations, or if you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I can make a suggestion, however, take the gift that you have been given and run with it. Pick better friends. Live a better life. Get away from anything negative and use this gift to the fullest. You can do anything that you want with your life, with this second chance. Don’t waste it,” he said, that pearly smile radiating from his face.

  I remembered Will then, and how he’d completely blindsided me with his new “career.” That bastard. The doctor was right. Whatever happened to me was a miracle. Wasting it wasn’t an option. How many other people had that bastard, Jay, killed? I couldn’t have been the only one. How many innocents? Speaking of innocents – where was Will? Why wasn’t he there at the hospital? Had he been killed after me? Somehow, I found myself too angry to care. How was that possible? Too angry to care if my best friend, and the man that I loved, was dead… Had dying affected me that badly?

  “Are you alright?” the doctor asked.

  Looking at him, tears rolled down my cheeks. I’d started crying. Perhaps it was when I began thinking about how lucky I was, or maybe when I began thinking of Will and how betrayed I felt. I wasn’t sure.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  He nodded. “I’m very happy to hear it. I’m going to assess you now, okay?”

  Happiness at my survival, and confusion for my feelings about Will vanished as panic settled in. My heart thumped hard in my chest as his words echoed. He was going to assess me. That meant he was about to see my fully healed chest. I just hoped that the paint job that Jen did would look real enough.

  Doctor Connors was very gentle as he pulled open my hospital gown. He stared down at what should have been the incision site. I couldn’t tell what he saw. Was it an incision that had scabbed over? Wait… Would it have scabbed over that quickly anyway? Did we overshoot? Or did he see perfectly smooth, healthy skin with thick blood painted on and dried? The poker face was strong with that one.

  A smile spread across his lips, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. His hands shook a little as he closed the thin cloth they called a gown. That was the same man that had cut me open to begin with. I’d seen the work. It was steady. He never could have done that with hands that shook, even a little, let alone that badly. He knew…

  “I’m going to go get a couple of things. I’ll be back in just a few moments,” he said.

  My heart pounded hard in my chest. What the hell did I expect? The actual plan was for me to do my mind controlly-thing – if that was even a real thing – and force him to see what I wanted him to. The
trouble we went to with the stitches and blood was basically to help me so that I didn’t have to work so hard to will him to see whatever I wanted him to because I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. No idea how to trigger it. Even thinking those things made my mind want to explode. Had I actually gone crazy?

  Likely…

  The doctor turned and motioned for the girls to follow him. “Doctors, would you mind coming with me, please?”

  “Mia,” Jen whispered loudly. My eyes met hers, and she seemed panicked.

  Doctor Connors looked from her to me and then back again.

  “Jen,” he said. “Follow me.”

  Worry seized me, and I sat straight up in bed, reaching out and grabbing his hand. He seemed even more jittery as his gaze shifted to me, his eyes wide.

  “What are you going to get?” I asked.

  “Nothing important,” he said, voice shaking. “I forgot to get your chart. I have some things that I need you to sign.”

  No… Doctors don’t do that. Nurses do. Receptionists do. Not the surgeon. He was lying. How the hell did I stop Jen from running earlier? How did I impress my will upon her? She was so much farther away.

  I focused on the hand that I held onto him with. The warmth of his hand in mine. My index finger was pressed against his wrist, and I could feel his pulse racing. He was terrified.

  “Tell me the truth,” I said.

  Another nervous smile. I still didn’t have him. He was about to lie again.

  “Please,” he said. “Try to relax. You don’t want to tear at your stitches.”

  My eyes narrowed. If he’d truly believed they were real, he’d have freaked out on me for sitting up as quickly as I did. He knew. Why couldn’t I get control of him? Was I even sure I’d done it the first time? Maybe I’d maxed it out with the med students. Or perhaps the more likely scenario, I had somehow hallucinated those things. My own heart was racing, right along with his.

  “Get control of him,” Catherine said.

  “I’m trying!” I snapped. Surely she wouldn’t have said that if I had hallucinated my control over them. Right?