Super Meals: Part Twenty

Doctor Ralph didn’t worry.

He had a PhD, so he knew he was well educated and a rather smart man.

He had a lucrative contract with one of the largest fast-food chains in the world, which afforded him the kind of lifestyle where he simply didn’t have to worry about (or, really, think about) money anymore, along with a “golden parachute” clause that would maintain his lifestyle even if he should get fired someday.

He was highly ranked and highly regarded within said fast-food company, which gave him the ability to go most anywhere in the world walk into any branch of the restaurant chain, and get anything and everything he wanted without question.

In short, he had money, power, and loyalty. And where he didn’t have loyalty, he at least had respect.

And where he didn’t have respect, he had fear, which was good enough for him.

But this night, Doctor Ralph was worried.

He had left his car behind at the hotel when he fled the desk clerk after Bethany’s death, and while he still had his research (which was the most important thing to him), he had been careful enough to never leave any trace of his presence whenever he’d traveled.

He set his considerable thoughts to the task of protecting his identity and came to some conclusions:

He couldn’t destroy the car – it was most certainly in the possession of the police by now, who were doubtless pouring over it with a fine-toothed comb in search of forensic evidence.

They would find it.

He hadn’t worn gloves or a hairnet, so there were most definitely fingerprints and hair and fiber samples, but this wasn’t what worried him. When he had begun his experiments he spent a sizeable amount of time and money creating a number of aliases, such as Mr. Robert Afett, and made sure that they all had the same fingerprints and DNA on file with assorted law enforcement agencies around the country. The great benefit of traveling and conducting his experiments, he found, was that he could continue to spread himself all over the world and add more and more links in the chain, so to speak. If any one agency processed the evidence of his existence, it would show one person. If they cross-referenced it against another agency, it would show two people, and so on and so forth for as many agencies as they checked. Every one a unique individual with different names, faces, credit records, government identification, addresses, and work history. All fake, of course, but real enough to grind any investigation to a halt while the officers untangled the mess.

He had been very careful.

Tonight he was not.

The rental car deliveryman had seen his face.

Normally this wasn’t a problem – many other people throughout the world had seen Doctor Ralph’s face, after all, but thus far he hadn’t been so careless as to leave behind a car that could be directly tied to him. He thought through the investigation in his mind:

They would trace the car to the rental company and compare the fake name to the fingerprints, hair, and DNA evidence and get two names, two faces. Then they would run both of them through the national database along with the evidence and get six more names and faces. Then they would print out all eight individual identities and show them to the deliveryman who had dropped off the rental car and he would point to the one with Doctor Ralph’s true face and say “Yeah, that’s the guy I dropped the car off with over at that big fancy hotel on Second Street.”

Then they would know what he looked like.

That was too dangerous.

So Doctor Ralph changed clothes into a crisp suit he had brought with him and looked up the closest branch of the fast food chain, which was six blocks away.

They were all six blocks away. The fast-food chain’s marketing saturation strategy was to do everything in their power so that nobody in the United States was ever more than six blocks away from a branch at any given moment. They had 70% coverage by now, meaning 70% of the country was within six blocks of a restaurant.

It did not take him long to walk there.

They were still open, of course, and he walked directly to the counter where a sullen thirty-something woman was hunched so far over the register she may as well have used her tits to punch in orders on the touchscreen.

“Hello, what can I get for you?” she asked.

“May I speak with the manager, please?” said Doctor Ralph.

“The manager’s gone home for the day, sir. Only the late-night shift manager is on duty at present. Will that suffice?” Her monotone was annoying him, and if he didn’t have a very specific plan in mind already he would have taken the time to fire the woman and write up the entire damn restaurant for having her on staff in the first place. Instead he glared at her and said, “Yes. Please tell them that Ralph Quinlan is here to inspect the facilities in anticipation of a new release.”

The woman was unmoved. She had been yelled at, sworn at, swung at, and spit at, so some sharp-dressed douchebag wasn’t about to intimidate her. She said nothing and turned to disappear back into the depths of the restaurant.

A moment later a younger woman with traces of white powder came bounding up to the counter and said “Oh good gods Mister Quinlan this is a tremendous honor to meet you sir I never thought we’d ever get a visit way out here in our small little town from anybody over in corporate and we just think it’s the greatest thing that you chose to come visit us and give us the chance to show off our happy little store here now Doris was just saying that you have a new program or something you want to test out here and you want to see the kitchen is that right?”

Doctor Ralph was momentarily taken aback at the verbal onslaught he’d just suffered, and while she had delivered her speech in roughly two seconds, it took his brain an additional eight seconds to find the pauses between words and sort it all out in his head. Then he said “Yes, that’s right, miss…?”

The night manager’s hand shot out at him “SaraBecca sir – it’s all one word even though it sounds like two but my parents just thought that since they couldn’t decide on one name and they both loved each one and each other so darn much that they’d just give me the whole thing and let the rest of the world sort it out.” She finished by giggling – a high pitched and wheezy sound that went on and on. Finally, Doctor Ralph held up a hand to silence her, and when he spoke he intentionally went at half-speed to try to counter her own radical cadence.

“SaraBecca, we at corporate are preparing to roll out a number of new menu items, and I was wondering if I could trouble you for the use of your kitchen for just a little while. We’d like to see how fast the burgers can be made and if any logistical changes would need to be made to the layout and kitchen design in order to ensure maximum efficiency. It will only take a few minutes, I assure you.”

SaraBecca jumped on the end of his sentence, saying “Oh my god yes please go right ahead and use anything you like anywhere you like we have everything fully stocked and cleaned and ready for the after-bar rush which usually hits around these parts at about two or two-thirty after the clubs all clear out and people rush through on their way home or to after parties so they can have some snacks before bedtime…” Doctor Ralph held up his hands again to cut her off and then gestured towards the kitchen.

“May I?”

She giggled again and finally said “Oh! Yes please go right ahead.”

He came around the counter and showed himself to the kitchen area where a younger woman was standing over the grill. When she heard people approaching she quickly shoved her cell phone in her pocket and shuffled around, looking for something to do so it didn’t look like she was just standing around playing with her phone. Everything was laid out perfectly, and Doctor Ralph was glad to see that much, at least, was right. The prep station was spotless, the condiments and dressings were fully stocked and loaded, all strategically placed so that any menu item could be constructed in as little time as ergonomically possible. “I’m afraid I will have to ask for some privacy,” he said. “I hope you understand, but we do have our trade secrets. Could I ask for your prep cook to move to the secondary station, in case any orders come in?”

SaraBecca said “Of course! Anything you want Mister Quinlan she doesn’t mind moving over at all do you Beth?” The cook rolled her eyes and stomped off to another identical aisle in the kitchen. “Is there anything else you need sir?” asked SaraBecca.

“Just some privacy, if you don’t mind,” said Doctor Ralph, smiling, shooing her away with a wave of his hand. She turned to leave and ran into the droopy woman who had abandoned her post at the register to follow SaraBecca and Doctor Ralph around the kitchen. SaraBecca shoved her out of the way and hissed through gritted teeth at her and while he couldn’t make out what the words were, Doctor Ralph was sure that she was getting a good, stern talking-to from the manager, and he smiled.

Super Meals: Part Nineteen

Jane wouldn’t stop screaming.

Mimi had taken her by the shoulders and was trying to force her backwards out the door of the hotel room, but she pushed back and refused to leave. She swiped at Mimi, Donnewicz, and the other uniformed officer who was trying to help Mimi hold her back, but even the three of them together weren’t enough to stop her.

Jane threw herself across the room and collapsed next to Bethany’s corpse, pawing at her and mumbling denials. Donnewicz shook his head and stepped outside while the uniformed officer moved towards Jane again, but Mimi stopped her. “No,” she said. “Give her a minute, officer…?”

“Young,” said the officer. “Jo Young.” She gestured towards the parking lot and said “I was up the block when the call came in, I was the first officer on scene.”

“You got the hotel locked down?” asked Mimi.

“Yes ma’am. I’ve got other unis interviewing the remaining guests and called in the plates of all the cars in the lot. The duty sergeant is interviewing the desk clerk now.”

Mimi was impressed at the young lady’s initiative. “Good work, officer Young. What’s going on with the cars in the lot? All of them accounted for?”

“No ma’am, there’s one extra.”

Mimi paused, daring to be hopeful that whoever did this was dumb enough to leave their car behind.  “And?” she asked.

“It belongs to a local rental agency who delivered it to that top-shelf hotel downtown on the corner of second and rose.”

“What time?”

“A few hours ago. They—“

“What do you mean ‘a few hours ago?’ Where’s the paper trail? This is a godsdamned rental car, where’s the fucking receipt?”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, they didn’t record the exact time that it was delivered. I’ve got a squad car headed to pick up the desk jockey who dropped it off and we’re running the name of the guy it was rented to, but so far everything’s coming up blank.”

“Who was the car rented to?”

Officer Young took a notepad from her breast pocket and flipped through it briefly before stopping on a page and saying “The name on the credit card used to rent the vehicle was one Mister Robert Afett.”

Mimi thought for a second, then said “Fuck.”

“Ma’am?”

“We’re fucked unless we can get a print off the car…” Officer Young looked confused, so Mimi continued. “Jo, when I’m done talking you’re going to call CSI and tell them to bring over their full forensics kit. Before you do that, though, you’re going to point to the car and tell me that nobody’s touched it since you got here.”

Jo raised a shaky finger and pointed to the extra car in the lot, then spoke into her police radio, asking for the crime scene investigation team. Mimi stomped towards the car and yelled out “Nobody touch this car! Everybody back up, and until CSI gets here I want a clear ten feet of space around this vehicle at all times!”

Jo followed after her and asked “Wait, detective, what’s going on? Who is Mister Afett?”

“It’s not ‘Mister Afett,’ you jackass. Robert. Afett. Bob. Bob Afett…”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah, somebody scammed a rental car company using a fucking Star Wars name. That’s why you can’t find him in the system anywhere.”

“Wait – Boba Fett was based on a real guy?”

“Don’t be stupid, officer. You were really impressing me tonight until now.”

“Sorry.”

Mimi sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Alright officer, you now get to keep an eye on this vehicle until the forensics team gets here. Anybody gets within ten feet, shoot them.”

“Where are you going, detective?”

“I get to go deal with…”

“I’m fine,” came Jane’s voice from the door to the room. “I’m gonna do my job, then call my parents and tell them their other daughter is dead. Just do your job and promise me you’ll get the fucker who did this to my baby sister.”

Mimi nodded and said “You got it.”

Super Meals: Part Eighteen

Walter went to bed hungry, so he had hungry dreams.

He rarely remembered what he dreamt. The typical mishmash of showing up naked to a date with a calculus test being given by a monstrous clown just wasn’t within the bounds of his imagination to come up with, usually. He slept, he rested, he recovered, he woke up, he continued his life.

This night he dreamed of food.

At least, it included food. Food was in the dream. Food composed the dream.

He dreamt of a young woman with a hamburger for a head who vomited up burgers onto sheets of waxed paper that she wrapped up and slid onto a conveyor belt that led out of the kitchen, around a counter, and into a large mouth that seemed to be built into the floor. It gulped with every burger that landed in its maw, and the sound echoed through Walter’s brain.

A voice to his left said “C17H20N4O6?”

He turned to look and there was a figure behind the counter now, wearing a lab coat in the obnoxious Technicolor hues of the fast food restaurant and a matching plague mask.

“Excuse me?” asked Walter.

“C6H5COONa,” came the voice from the plague mask. “C6H7KO2?”

“I…I don’t know what you’re saying,” said Walter, who began to back away from the counter. “I don’t know what that is,” he continued. He looked around the restaurant and realized that he wasn’t alone – there were patrons at nearly every table all around him now, frozen in mid-bite, staring at him.

They were all made out of food.

There was an ice-cream cone in a onesie sitting in a high-chair being spoon-fed by a…woman? It was hard to tell at first. All Walter saw was short noodle-hair, but then the figure turned and he could see bulbous cup-lid breasts. Walter turned again, looking for the door, but he ran into a tall…man? Yes, this one had to be a man. He had spiky blond hair made of French fries and wore glasses made of actual Coke bottles perched on a chicken nugget nose above thick lips. He, too, was dressed in the garish colors of the fast food chain, as well as a visor that encircled his head and had a light dusting of salt that rained from his French-fry hair when he moved his head.

“What’s going on?” asked Walter.

The food-man, whose nametag read MISTER MANAGER said “C6nH(10n+2)O(5n+1)?” and held out a handful of sauce packets. Instinctively, Walter reached out to take them and MISTER MANAGER dumped them into his open hand. Then he reached into a pocket and took out more packets, dumping them into Walter’s hand. Then another handful of packets, causing Walter to cup his hands together to hold them all and failing as several slid onto the floor and popped, like bloody bubbles.

“Wait,” said Walter. “I don’t want these. Here, take them back,” he said, thrusting them towards MISTER MANAGER, who ignored him and kept shoveling handful after handful of packets out of his pockets and dropping them at Walter’s feet.

Walter backed away from MISTER MANAGER and spotted a faux-wood-paneled trashcan. He moved to throw the packets into it and the opening slammed shut with lips and teeth that nearly took Walter’s hands off. He yelped and leapt back away from it, throwing the packets at it. Some went in, some splattered against the side.

The trashcan belched.

Walter looked for the door, but there wasn’t one. Just floor-to-ceiling windows covered in film that let light in but didn’t let you see out. Around the restaurant, the other patrons were standing up from their tables and moving towards him. Dozens of people were advancing on him like zombies, offering him foodstuffs with grossly outstretched appendages.

A man with literal sausage fingers held out a slab of meat that looked like ribs and said “C10H12O5?”

“W-what?” said Walter, backing into the conveyor belt.

On another side, a woman with stringy iceberg-lettuce hair blew her nose into a small sauce cup and held it out, saying “C6H8O2?”

“No…No, I don’t want that,” said Walter, edging along the counter, trying to escape.

From over his shoulder came a chicken patty and a voice in his ear whispered “C10H12CaN2Na2O8…”

Walter yelled, this time, and fell onto the conveyor belt running down the counter. As it rolled him through the restaurant he saw more plague masked register workers punching keys on their computers, more restaurant patrons lined up along the conveyor, offering him vague, food-like items and babbling unrecognizable words. As he approached the hole at the end of the conveyor belt, MISTER MANAGER stood by, grinning and holding out a steaming single-serving pie and loudly proclaiming “C12H17N4OS+!”

Walter couldn’t escape the conveyor belt. Whenever he tried to roll off, he was buffeted back by cashiers on one side or food-patrons on the other. The yawning mouth got closer and everybody was shouting at him and the voices melded together into one, repeating chant that called out “HCl+NaHCO3:NaCl+H2CO3…” over and over again.

As he was rolled over the edge into the mouth of the floor the voices stopped.

He fell.

He saw white light above him and nothingness below.

A multicolored plague mask popped over the edge of the hole, and a voice that whispered directly into his brain said “…+Bi[C6H4(OH)CO2]3.”

And then Walter Elliot woke up.

Super Meals: Part Seventeen

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Detective Mimi was no stranger to phone calls at 4am.

People were rude enough to be killed at all hours, and it was her job to find out who killed them, so it was nothing new to her to be awoken by her phone.

She opened one eye and read the caller ID, sighed, and picked up. “What do you want, Donnewicz?”

He didn’t answer right away, he hesitated.

Something was very wrong.

“Mi… I mean, Detective Spatchcock, this is officer—“

She sat upright in the seconds it took him to stutter out his response and said “Cut the shit, Mark, what is it?”

 “Look, Mimi, you need to get down to the Down Town Motel, room 110, like now.”

She thumbed the speakerphone button and tossed the phone down on her bed while she put some pants on, saying “Why? What happened?”

“Look, you know I can’t give details over the phone. Just…there’s been a murder and the coroner’s on her way already and you need to be here first.”

She was looking for a bra, but hearing the combination of that motel, a murder, and mention of Jane made up her mind to skip it and get moving.

She had the lights and siren on before she even put her car in gear and when the pedal hit the floor it didn’t come off until she was at the hotel four minutes later. It was barely in park when she threw the door open and leapt from the vehicle.

“Where is she?” she asked the officer approaching her. It was Mark Donnewicz, the one who’d called her.

“Before you go in there, I have to warn you it’s…weird,” he said.

Mimi stopped. She’d heard of things being gross, sick, fucked up, twisted, messy, and, once, “goofy.”

So far, nobody’d ever said that a murder scene was weird.

“Weird how?” she asked.

“Look,” he continued, “get in there and do your job and I’ll hold Jane out here as long as I can so you can. But, and I hate to say this, it looks like you two are gonna have to figure this one out together.”

In and of itself, that was nothing unusual. She was a murder detective; Jane was the coroner. Jane provided medical expertise; Mimi provided the creative thinking and knowledge of the criminal mind. The worked well together until the breakup, and after the breakup they were at least professional and cordial with each other (although they tended to communicate more via emails and memos than in person).

 Donnewicz was one of the few officers who knew about Mimi and Jane’s relationship situation, so a warning like this was something to pay attention to.

He stepped out of her way and she went into the hotel room.

Bethany had fallen over backwards onto the bed, but her legs were locked straight and stuck out over the edge. She was still holding the gun to her head; her mouth frozen agape and her eyes open and rolled backward.

There were signs of a struggle, of course, which didn’t surprise her. Someone had blasted pepper-spray in the room – it stained the wall and the scent lingered in the air – and the furniture was tossed askew. The front desk clerk was in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub and a uniformed officer was standing next to him taking notes in a flipbook-style notepad.

Without thinking, Mimi went over to Bethany’s corpse and checked the pulse in the neck. As soon as her fingers touched her skin, a scream ripped into the air.

Mimi yanked her hand back, but the scream continued. Realizing that it wasn’t coming from Bethany, she whipped her head around looking for the source.

Jane was standing in the doorway.

Her eyes had locked on her dead baby sister, and she couldn’t stop screaming.

Super Meals: Part Sixteen

Doctor Ralph was surprised at how clean the room was.

For a hotel that, to him, defined the term “flophouse,” he was expecting it to be far worse than it actually was. But the bed was clean, there were no stains on the linens, the floor, or the walls, and there were no rodents or bugs to be seen anywhere.

Bethany strolled in, tossed her keys on the bedside table and her purse on the bed, and then luxuriated next to it. Her hand rested on the mouth of her bag while she watched Doctor Ralph.

For the first time that night, he appeared nervous. He held the bag from the fast food place in front of himself with both hands and shuffled his feet. He took a step towards the small dining table in front of the single window in the room, then a half step towards the bed, then stopped. “I…” he started. “I’m sorry, I’ve never done this before. I’m not quite sure what the…the protocol is.”

Bethany smiled and reached into her handbag. She pulled out a lipstick and painted her mouth a startling crimson, then slid the lipstick back as she dropped her bag next to the bed. “It’s okay,” she said, standing up. “This may sound weird, but relax, I’m a professional. I’ll take care of everything.” She entwined her arms around his neck and pulled his face close to hers. “Let me start this off for us…”

Her lips brushed against his, and she tilted her head to kiss him, but he raised his hands in front of himself, putting the bag between them. “If…if you don’t mind…” he said. “You did promise me you’d eat something before we…before we start.”

She sighed and pulled her head back, smiling. She tried to kiss him again, but he turned his face away from hers and she slapped his cheek with a quick kiss before snapping the bag out of his hands and dancing towards the bed.

“So what’s the big deal about this sandwich, anyway?” she asked, dropping herself onto the bed. “What’s so special about it?”

 Doctor Ralph took out his tablet computer and opened it up as he sat at the table. “This restaurant is trying out some new ingredients and…I have a friend who works for them, so I told them I’d try it out.” He opened up the spreadsheet and found Bethany’s entry, highlighting it.

“So where’s yours?” she asked.

“What?” he asked, looking up from his computer.

“Where’s yours?” she said through a mouthful of sandwich. “You said you were gonna try it out, so why didn’t you get yourself one?”

“Oh, I…”

He hadn’t expected her to be smart.

He was saddened, actually, that this was the case. In his mind he could always at least half-justify the deaths of his test subjects because he viewed it as a type of public service. He was getting undesirable elements off the streets and gathering valuable research in the process. He had never thought of himself as a killer since he had never actively killed any of them.

Yes, he did bribe or cajole or convince them to accompany him and he did feed them, but if they had a poor reaction to the food then it was their own weakness. Really, he wasn’t doing anything more than the medical doctors who performed allergy tests with negative reactions.

So now that he was realizing that Bethany was sharp, as well as beautiful, he felt a twinge of guilt at her inevitable end.

“I had one already,” he said. “I had one for lunch, so now I’m just gathering more feedback.”

She popped the last bite of sandwich in her mouth and said “You decided to pick up a prostitute to perform market research? Isn’t that a bit pricey?” She wiped the last traces of guacamole from the corners of her mouth and cracked open the bottle of water, taking a long drink.

“Well, I was hoping we could do a little bit more once you finished eating,” said Doctor Ralph. 

Bethany lowered the bottle and ran her tongue around the tip. “Oh,” she said. “Glad to hear it. I was half afraid I wouldn’t get to work tonight.” She stood up and slinked over to Doctor Ralph, putting one leg up on the armrest of his chair. “You like what you see?”

She leaned in while turning her knee out, spreading her legs and putting her crotch front and center in his face. He looked up and was visibly startled by her presence.

“Oh my,” he said. “I mean, yes, of course. That’s…that’s wonderful. I like the ladies,” he continued. “I like to sex women a lot.”

He’s pathetic, she thought. And the pathetic ones are always so cute to fuck with…

She took one of his hands and placed it against the inside of her thigh, feeling his hand tremble. She started to pull his hand up further and he yanked it back, stammering.

“I…I…I’m not quite ready yet,” he blurted. “I have to put in this market feedback, you see.” He tapped the screen and brought up a clock. “I have to send it in time.”

Bethany snorted and pulled her leg back. “Fine,” she said, going back to the bed and flopping down on it again. “But you know I’m charging you for waiting. I don’t care what you wanna do with me, but you’re paying for it even if you don’t actually do anything.” She turned away from him and fished her phone out of her handbag next to the bed, fiddling with it. Even so, she pulled her skirt up a little, letting the bottom of her ass peek out from underneath.

Doctor Ralph barely noticed. He was fixated on the stopwatch he had running on the clock on his tablet. Only a couple of minutes had passed since she finished eating, but the reactions were all different. Some subjects reacted as soon as they’d finished their first bite, and some subjects didn’t feel anything for an hour or more after eating.

More time passed.

He stared at his screen. She played with her phone.

More time passed.

Bethany had enough. She snorted with a mix of derisiveness and exasperation and hopped up from the bed. “Look,” she said, “I’m done fucking around. I’m outta here.”

Doctor Ralph stood up and said, “Wait! You can’t go just yet!”

“The fuck I can’t. You owe me two hundred dollars. Pay up.”

“But…but-but-but I haven’t seen… I mean, you haven’t changed…” he said as he moved to block the door to the hotel room.

Bethany had seen that move before.

She moved back towards the bed and grabbed her purse, slipping her phone inside and leaving her hand there. “Get away from the door,” she said. “And give me my money.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m not done yet.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, pulling the small pistol from her purse. She didn’t aim it at him, but she made sure that it was easily seen and she watched his eyes find it in her hand. “Now give me my money, and get away from the goddamned door.”

He raised his hands and she half-raised the gun in his direction. “But please,” he said, “I just need…just a little more time.”

“No,” she said, raising the gun all the way and pointing it at him. “You’re out of time.”

“WAIT!” he shouted, and brought his hands forward for the gun. He knocked it down and they both froze when it went off.

Bethany stumbled backwards, staring at her leg, and Doctor Ralph stared as well.

There was no blood.

The bullet was flattened against her leg.

“You…” started Doctor Ralph, but he didn’t finish the sentence. Bethany stood up and aimed the gun at him, then at her leg again and pulled the trigger.

This time the bullet bounced off of her.

“Oh my god…” said Doctor Ralph, and Bethany laughed. A manic grin overtook her face and her laughs came in sharp barks. She pointed the gun at her opposite arm and pulled the trigger again…and again, the bullet bounced off.

Her face was frozen now in an open-mouthed smile and her laughter continued as she fired round after round at herself and every bullet proved harmless.

The last round bounced off of her temple and didn’t leave a mark. She gave out another laugh-bark and her eyes flitted around the room. Her face hadn’t moved and she still held the gun to her head. She grunted and struggled against her own body, but it refused to obey her. Her eyes rolled and scanned and swept the room desperately, but the rest of her body was frozen in place.

Doctor Ralph threw himself at his computer as Bethany’s barks grew further and further apart. He was desperate to capture the information and he looked up to watch her as he typed. After about a minute, she stopped making any noises at all.

Another minute later her eyes rolled back in her head.

Doctor Ralph stood up and checked her pulse, feeling it weaken under his fingers as he watched the clock on his computer. He reached out towards the screen as the beats got slower and slower, each one further and further apart.

When he hadn’t felt anything for a solid minute, he tapped the screen, stopping the clock and recording the time.

The pounding on the door surprised him.

“Hey, fucker! What’s going on in there?” came the angry voice of the front desk clerk.

Doctor Ralph folded up his tablet as the pounding continued. “Hey,” came the voice again, “I already called the cops, so you may as well open the door and let me in before they roll up and shoot you.”

He went to the purse on the floor and emptied it on the bed, finding what he needed immediately and snatching it up before hiding next to the door. “Come in,” he said.

The door flew open and the desk clerk stormed in. When he saw Bethany frozen in place with the gun to her head and stopped, curious. “Beth?” he asked, as Doctor Ralph tried to slip around the door and sneak out, but the manager heard him and turned, swinging for his face.

Doctor Ralph expected the punch, and his arm was already up, aiming the pepper spray at the man’s face and pushing the plunger as the fist came at him.

The blast caught the clerk full force in his right eye and the cloud spread quickly. Even Doctor Ralph felt the effects as he choked and gagged his way out of the room and took off running down the street, clutching the tablet computer to his chest. A block away he saw police lights approaching and he slowed to a walk, forcing himself to stand up straight and take on a strolling gait.

The police cars rolled right by him.

Another couple of blocks and he took out his phone, pulling up the maps app and typing in the name of his hotel. When he realized that it was only four blocks away from where he was, he sighed and relaxed.

Then he went back to the hotel.