He waited, listening, trying to decide whether or not he had actually heard something. His subconscious apparently had, judging from his sudden tight grip around the handle of the taser.
Holding as still as he could manage, he stood there, waiting, and tried to listen. Whatever had prompted that unconscious response was not repeated, but it took an effort of actual will to loosen his cramped fingers from their grip on the taser.
“A bit jumpy, eh?” John murmured.
He moved toward the door again, feeling like a character in a bad horror movie. Any moment, he expected some murderous figure to appear in the doorway, wielding a chainsaw or bloody machete.
Get a grip, he warned himself.
This was how accidents happened—sometimes fatal ones, he knew. Officers on edge reacted without thinking, their animal brains overriding their training, wounding family members and fellow officers.
There.
It was a soft, quiet sound. It was so brief, though, that he could not make out what it was or where it had come from. Again, he waited, but after several long seconds it did not happen again. John began to wonder whether he might have imagined it—or, in his hyper-alert state, his subconscious was magnifying the smallest sounds as possible threats.
Taking a long, slow and calming breath, John closed and locked the door. The click of the lock seemed unnaturally loud. He turned back toward his father’s desk and the boxes stacked next to it.
Slowly, he sorted through the short stack of sheets on the desk. Some were bills, a few were receipts, and one seemed to be a story covered with handwritten corrections in bright red ink. He glanced at for only a moment, assuming that it was simply pages from one of his father’s countless manuscripts in progress.
How many of these has he actually ever published?
John felt a mild twinge of guilt that he did not know. His father’s stories, for the most part, had never interested him much. The usual settings and subject matter of starships and ray guns held small appeal for him. This, he assumed, was more of them same.
Even as he dropped it back to the desk, his eyes lingered on the top page for a moment. His subconscious registered something in the words they say there. John forced himself to read it more carefully.
A frigid chill shot through him. He stared down at the page, his gaze no longer focused on the page, but his mind seeing what had been described within its words there. He tried to swallow against rigid lump in his throat.
He screams, impaled by the post. His life blood flows from the wound, but not quickly enough that he will lose consciousness any time soon. Pain radiates from his chest, but he dare not move—any motion increases the agony. He gasps, trying to draw breath. Each inhalation brings more pain. He coughs, liquid thickly filling his lungs. Choking, he reflexively gasps, and agony tears through his chest.
He wants to cry out, to release the agony, but cannot draw enough breath—fears to. The blood begins to cool against his skin, thickening. The sensation makes him want to be ill, but only distantly. He realizes that his life blood continues to leak away.
A haze of gray pulses at the edges of his vision, like the slow lap of waves upon a still lake. It ebbs and flows, slowly, but inexorably. It clouds more of his vision with each beat, but slowly . . . slowly. He realizes that its pace matches the rhythm of his heart, the strangled constriction of his lungs. Both organs struggle in their own agony now, deprived of the vital life fluid they require to function.
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