On · the · run · and · other · short · stories

She continued to stare at him, her gaze was just as cold as ice and as sharp as a scalpel.

“Hon, did you want to go with David or not?”

“Well sure, let’s go,” John said.

The feeling of deja-vu was fading from him quickly. Despite that he had a lingering suspicion he had seen and done these very same things before. It was almost as though he wasn’t moving forward in time at all but was being recycled in it.

He was reminded of the movie Groundhog Day and how Bill Murray had been forced to repeat the same day over and over never really moving forward. He had moved forward though hadn’t he?

‘Ahhh yes, he moved forward after he made the right decisions,’ John thought to himself. ‘But what are the right decisions for me.’

‘I don’t know what they will be. I’m just going to have to find out,’ John thought. ‘Maybe it’s just one of those like paradoxes and I have to keep repeating things. Maybe I’m dead, I died somewhere and this is hell. It’s a possibility isn’t it? I’ve heard that hell is different for ever person. It also depends on your faith, and who you are. There’s the seven circles. If you’re Hindu they say that no matter what you have to go to hell and depending on what you did in life, what your karma is you determines how long you stay and how you’re reincarnated.’

Around him the restaurant was a hustle and bustle.

Did it have a PA system?

He could have sworn he heard someone’s voice above him, like on a PA system, what had it said though?

Smith party of four? Does he need more?

The world seemed to be a bit of a buzz... it was like he couldn’t quite hear anything, yet he could hear everything. That buzz... that god awful buzz and zippy feeling. He felt like everything was passing him. Like everything was streaking by him sort of like driving very fast.

“Hon are you ok?” Dyan asked.

She had seemingly changed places at the table. She had been sitting next to him, now she was sitting across from him.

He couldn’t remember her getting up and moving. It seemed that she was just suddenly across the table from him. It was disconcerting.

So was the fact that as his eyes rolled around in his head not really able to focus, he thought he saw a familiar face... he couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he was sure he recognized the face.

Maybe it was just one of those guys who had a face that looked instantly familiar.

“Hon... are you alright?” Dyan asked again.

He wasn’t sure what, but something seemed different about her again too.

“Dyan, I think I’m going to go to the restroom.. I think I had a bit too much tea,” said John as he stood up from the table.

Hadn’t it been a square or rectangle before... now it was circular.

John was starting to feel queasy. Very queasy.

As he walked to the restroom the restaurant seemed to be constantly changing. One minute it looked like a typical chain neighborhood bar and grill, the next minute it looked like a gas station and then a ski lodge, then back to a neighborhood bar and grill. At times it seemed to be all three.

He wasn’t sure what was going on but as it continued it made him more and more nauseous.

The buzzing and the voices that seemed to be coming over the PA system. He still couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.

He thought he heard something about condition.

‘Condition? Condition of what? Maybe I heard it wrong, I’m in a restaurant, why would they say condition on a PA system in a restaurant,’ John thought.

He entered the restroom and had another one of those God awful flashes of deja-vu.

‘This restroom isn’t right,’ John thought. ‘There should be tin signs, or sports pages, or movie memorabilia on walls. This is all wrong. This--.’

The restroom was black and white. The floor was white and a little more than half the walls were white, there was a line of black tiles above about the halfway point on the walls.

It was a restroom from the past, or the future?

A restroom from a Chinese restaurant.

A restroom that didn’t belong in a neighborhood bar and grill. A neighborhood bar and grill he was supposedly in.

He grasped for the wall of the nearest stall to steady himself from he nausea and dizziness that were wracking his body and mind.

“Hey Johnny, there’s someone in here,” a familiar voice said.

It was the voice of... of... of who?

“Sorry man,” John said.

He went into the next stall and looked down into the toilet. He just looked. It didn’t take long before he saw something else in the toilet. His own vomit. He had vomited and didn’t even know it.

He just hoped he didn’t end up face first in the toilet.

John exited the stall and stared at the door to the restroom. It seemed to be jiggling. He wasn’t sure why it seemed to be jiggling. It just did.

He thought he heard the door open, but it was still closed.

‘Must have been the women’s room door that I heard,’ John thought.

As he exited the restroom, things returned to semi-normal. Things seemed to stop jiggling and changing at any rate. They still didn’t seem right, but he didn’t hear the PA anymore... and.

There were still some things out of place, like the familiar faces... some of the decor seemed to be blended. There was now a big fireplace where there had been a bar. It looked like the kind of fireplace that might be in a ski lodge.

Then there were the new chairs.

They were black and shiny metal with a flower print fabric on the seat part. They seemed to be straight from a Chinese restaurant. At least in parts of the restaurant.

In others there were cheap diner style booths. The kind you might find in a gas station. One whole wall had also changed to a row of cold cases filled with sodas.

John finally found the table he had been sitting at with David, Michelle, Ben, Tammy and Dyan. But it too had changed.

No longer was it square, or rectangular. No longer was it even circular. It was now a triangle. With only two chairs. Dyan was there, but she looked a little different.

He still couldn’t figure out what was different about her either.

“There you are. I was starting to think you had fallen in,” said Dyan.

“Ha, No. I’m here, I didn’t fall in,” said John.

“Well good, because that just would have been a mess,” Dyan said.

“David and the others had to leave, but I told them we’d go on the ski trip with them,” said Dyan.

Well that at least explained why they weren’t at the table, but there wasn’t even enough room at the table Dyan was sitting at for the others to have sat there with her.

“Why’d you say I would go? I didn’t say I wanted to go on the ski trip,” John said.

“I thought it would be fun for the two of us to go take a vacation together,” Dyan said.

“But skiing?”

“It’s just a little trip, and we’ll have a room all to ourselves.”

“We can always have a room all to ourselves.”

“But hon, it’ll be in the mountains and it will be romantic,”

“Look, I just don’t want to go.”

The PA voice was back.

This time he could hear something very clearly.

“He needs another shot, he’s not reacting well.”

John looked around. He looked at Dyan and then around the restaurant. The bar was gone still so no one could be talking about a shot from the bar. Then he just reacted.

“Who needs another shot? Shot of what?”

Dyan looked at him with the greatest of concern.

“Hon, what are you talking about? Who are you talking to?”

“I’m... didn’t you hear the voice? It sounded like it was coming over a PA, it said he needs another shot and then it said he’s not reacting well.”

John looked around again.

The restaurant had returned to what should have been and could have been regarded as normal. It once again looked like a neighborhood bar. Once again the table was a rectangle. Once again all of his friends were around it.

Whatever was going on, was resetting itself.

“So you ready for that ski trip man,” David said.

He was no sitting across from John and Dyan was now sitting beside him.

“What is going on?” John asked.

“Well, we were discussing a trip to the mountains, a ski trip to the mountains, and we were talking about that while you were in the bathroom, but that’s it,” said Ben. Ben was now bald, his blond hair had been replaced by a shiny head.

Everyone was different but the same.

Perhaps the most startling change was that Michelle had become Puerto Rican.

“Why is everything changing?”

“John, what the fuck are you talking about?” David asked.

“You, all of you are different, the restaurant is different, the... everything is different.”

‘Everything is different. How would they know, they don’t even know they’ve changed?’

“What are you talking about John? No one has changed. We’re all wearing the same clothes we were wearing when you left for the restroom. How do you mean by changed?,” Ben said.

“Look, it’s not important, just... nevermind. Nevermind.”

John excused himself from the table again and headed for the bathroom once more.

When he entered the bathroom things had changed again. As he closed the door, it absorbed into the wall and disappeared.

The room was now padded up to the height of a man’s head. Above that the walls were a light mint green. It reminded him of... of what.

Movies.

What kind of movies?

‘The kind where a guy is in a hospital or a nut house, it’s that soothing green. That antiseptic nut house green. That green they use in medical buildings from Washington D.C. to Shanghai to Dubai. It was something... the medical profession used. I’m not sure why other than that it is supposed to soothe the nerves.’

It certainly wasn’t soothing his nerves, especially not with the door disappearing into thin air.

The door had disappeared, and another one appeared across from the one he had walked in through, this one didn’t have a door handle on his side.

There was a small screen covering the window on the door, and there was only one window in the entire room.

His clothes had changed too. He was now in what appeared to be hospital garb. A patients hospital garb.

“Hello?”

Once again the voice from the PA.

“He’s up again,” came PA voice number one.

“What did he do again,” a second voice from the PA. This one more feminine.

“We’re not sure exactly what he did. He was found by a couple in their cabin up in the mountains. He was nearly starved and he was severely dehydrated. There were the bodies of four other people in the cabin. They had all been brutally murdered. Our patient here was the only one left alive and he was nearly dead himself, he was covered in the others blood,” the first voice said. It apparently didn’t care what he thought.

“So he murdered them?” The feminine voice asked.

“You see that’s the interesting thing. Dr. Myers; he hasn’t stood trial yet. There really is only circumstantial evidence for the case from what I understand, but it doesn’t matter anyway, he’s not competent to stand trial,” said the first voice. “That’s why he’s here in our care and custody.”

“Hmmm, so why isn’t he competent to stand trial?”

“Well, when you claim someone else murdered the other four people in a cabin with you and you’re found sitting in a pool of their blood it does make it a bit hard. Especially when that’s pretty much all the evidence. I was at the scene that night, the detectives believe he wore gloves because they couldn’t really find any prints or hard evidence. There were no witnesses, at least not any living witnesses, and so it just kind of leads us to today. With Mr. John Dearborn sitting in room 317 of the Overbrook Institute. Most of the time we keep him heavily sedated because he disturbs the other patients, but sometimes, somehow, he fights the sedatives.”

John was sitting on the floor in the room now.

‘Was that what had happened, he had killed his friends? Could I really have killed Dyan, Ben, Michelle, Tammy and David. But wait, hadn’t they said only four other bodies were discovered in the Cabin? What about the fifth person.’

“Five people in a cabin all by themselves, and then one just goes crazy, it’s a rather tough pill to swallow Dr. Powers,” the feminine voice said. “I’d like to talk to him once he is awake.”

“Well that’s the other interesting thing Dr. Meyers. Before we dosed him yesterday, he requested you by name. Oh, and I never said that there were just five people in the cabin. There were six people in the cabin. The police know that because there were six bags found, and six drivers licenses, three males and three females.”

“Dr. Powers, I do have one other question, if he says he didn’t do it, what does he say happened?”

There was a pause that John didn’t like the sound of. A large blank gap. A gap you could drive a mack truck through.

“Dr. Meyers, he says that Bealzebub did it.”

Dr. Meyers, who ever she was, had a short chuckle.

“The devil made me do it. Isn’t that the oldest excuse in the book?”

“Make no mistake Dr. Meyers, he does not say that Bealzebub , the devil, Satan, Lucifer, made him do it, he says that Lucifer did it himself.”

“Dr. Powers, I can not wait to interview him.”

John sat quietly in his room.

‘Quite the raving lunatic I am,’ John thought ironically as he sat in the corner, quiet, still.

A few hours later, the door to the cage of the wild beast known as John opened, and Dr. Meyers stepped through. The door closed behind her. An orderly was posted on the other side.

“John, I’m Dr. Dyan Meyers. I work here at the institution. I’ve taken a special interes—”

John cut her off.

“I know who you are. I know what you want, and why you came here.”

“Oh?”

“Yes Dyan. You came back because you wanted to put an end to his rule of this vessel.”

“Vessel? Who’s rule John?”

“Dyan, you know very well who’s rule,” John said, as he looked up at Dyan, his eyes smoldering with hatred and a soul not of his own.

“Yes Lucifer... I do.”

The room became hot. Hot and quiet.

* * *

“Have you seen Dr. Meyers,” Dr. James Powers asked of the orderly posted outside room 317. “Has she come out?”

“No Doc, she’s still in there,” said the orderly.

“Open the door immediately,” Dr. Powers said in a voice as still as a flag in a gale force wind.

The orderly nervously inserted a key into the lock on the door of room 317 and opened the door.

When the doctor and the orderly saw what was inside, the doctor ran forward uncapping a needle, while the orderly ran down the hall, a hand over his mouth to prevent himself from puking. Dr. Dyan Meyers lay on the floor motionless. In the corner, John sat, covered in vermilion.

Dr Meyers blood covered the floor, the walls and ceiling.

When the orderly returned, his face was nearly as white as his uniform, two security guards followed close behind.

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