John Lutz - Pulse

Ann returned to her desk and sat back down at her laptop. She clicked on Facebook and there was her home page, her familiar profile photo.

And a posting that was from her.

From Ann.

Right beneath her photograph. The one with her cocking her head to the side and smiling:

I have this feeling something bad is about to happen.

Facebook said the message had been posted slightly more than a minute ago. Ann hadn’t posted a Facebook message in over a week.

When I was out in the hall!

Suddenly the image on her computer screen faded and vanished. Her software programs began to appear, one after another, then roll and disappear, more and more rapidly, while she sat there stunned.

Some kind of virus!

… Something bad is about to happen.

“The best thing to do in a situation like this is unplug the computer,” said a voice behind her.

A hand rested on her right shoulder and squeezed hard enough to hurt.

John Lutz

Pulse

J ody Jason absently flipped her thick red hair and jogged up the wide concrete steps toward the impressive entrance to Jung Hall, known among students simply as the psych building.

It was warm in the building, but still a few degrees cooler than outside. Professor Elaine Pratt was waiting for her in her office. Jody doubted if the appointment had anything to do with her business psychology class, which the professor taught. Though Jody was majoring in law, the Vanguard program had assigned Professor Pratt to be Jody’s counselor. Besides, the B-Psych class was a snap for Jody, like most of her other classes.

The office was small and cluttered, and lined with enough books to make it smell musty. Books were shelved wherever possible, including above the windows and doors. Most of the books pertained to law, psychology, and psychiatry. But there were also biographies, medical tomes, sets of general reference books, textbooks… even popular fiction. Jody had long ago made note of the fact that the professor was an eclectic reader. Elaine Pratt wasn’t one of those indrawn academics constricted by narrow if long tunnels of knowledge.

She’d stood up behind her desk when Jody knocked and entered. Now she motioned for Jody to take a chair near the desk and sat back down. Jody cleared some books from the chair and moved it over so it was more directly facing the desk.

Professor Pratt was wearing a starched yellow blouse today with light gray slacks. Jody figured that the professor, if she wanted to dress for it, could achieve a stunning willowy attractiveness. Like a fashion model. Jody could imagine her strutting down a runway, drawing every eye like a magnet.

In the wall of bookshelves directly behind her desk was one of those huge two-volume boxed Oxford dictionaries, the kind that came with a tiny cardboard drawer that held a magnifying glass for reading the fine print. Staring at it, Jody decided you must really want to look up a word to wrestle with one of those mammoth, weighty volumes.

The professor smiled at Jody. “I can’t reveal anything about it at this time,” she said, “but I thought you should know that something good is coming your way.”

Jody was surprised. “Good how?”

“I can’t say, or I would. What I need to know is if you feel ready for a change in your life.”

“Ready?”

“I need to know that you don’t have plans for the rest of the summer that you’ve kept to yourself. That you’re not pregnant. That sort of thing.”

Jody laughed. “No other plans. And I guarantee you that I’m not pregnant.”

“And I need to know if you’re ready in other ways. If you’ve absorbed certain knowledge between the lines of text.” Professor Pratt looked directly at Jody and didn’t blink.

“I’m confident that I’ve absorbed those lessons,” Jody said, knowing what the professor wanted to hear.

Telling people what they wanted to hear was a skill she’d mastered early and well.

“The chancellor and I have discussed you often,” Professor Pratt said. “We think you have special abilities.”

“I think I’m ready for whatever we’re talking about here.”

Professor Pratt stood up. “That’s fine, Jody. I don’t like keeping you hanging, but I needed to make sure you had that block of time free.”

“I’m available,” Jody said, smiling. “And thank you.”

She maintained an erect posture as she went to the door and opened it.

She didn’t glance back as she passed through into the anteroom and then into the hall. Nothing about her revealed her thoughts.

What the hell was that all about?

C hoking to death!

That was Ann Spellman’s first realization.

Then she began breathing deeply, noisily through her nose. Something-it felt to her tongue like tape-was clamped tightly over her mouth. She gagged, coughed, and worked the tip of her distorted tongue violently but couldn’t budge the taut and tacky surface.

She forced calm on herself, made herself breathe evenly through her nose. Her mind refused to function fully as she tried to remember. The man, the drink… he must have put something in her drink. She remembered walking with him, supported by him. She hadn’t been drunk-she knew that. She never drank enough to get drunk.

Had they walked to her apartment?

Had they just left her apartment?

Ann wasn’t clear on any of it.

She attempted to move her arms and legs, and shuddered with painful, wracking cramps.

Where am I?

When she screamed almost silently into the unyielding tape and opened her eyes wide, she realized everything was upside down. She was on a hard surface and staring at the night sky. She could see stars through the leaves of overhanging branches.

What an awkward, painful position she was in! How…?

A man’s voice spoke to her in memory: “The best thing you can do in a situation like this is unplug the computer.”

Standing behind her, near her, when she was seated at her crashing computer.

He must have gotten in somehow and been hiding in the apartment when I locked the door. All the time I was thinking I was safe.

And now she was paying for her carelessness. She remembered now that she’d lost consciousness, and he’d forced her to drink, not wine. He’d said it was wine, but it was something else. It had made her dizzy, made her feel small, smaller, so that she did what he said, went with him somewhere. To a car?

She craned her neck and looked around. There were planters with brown, dead plants, a surrounding stockade fence with vines growing up it. There was a brick wall-dark, old brick. She seemed to be in something like a small courtyard. There was a moon. Light from somewhere else-maybe a streetlight.

A slight scuffing sound near her, where she couldn’t see, made her muscles tighten with alarm. Her legs began cramping and she could do nothing to relieve the pain.

The fear, the dread knowledge she wanted so badly to deny, invaded her mind and body. Nausea expanded in her in waves and she had to swallow, terrified that if she vomited she’d choke to death. She began to tremble and felt her bladder release.

This is happening to me. To ME!

Make sense of it! For God’s sake, concentrate and make sense of it so you can deal with it!

I’m not alone, but he hasn’t done anything to me. Not yet. Maybe he won’t. Maybe this is it. He’s a sex nut who gets his jollies tying up women, then simply watching them, enjoying their helplessness.

It’s possible. There are such men.

By the time she’d gathered her wild and errant thoughts, the cramps had subsided. She determined that she was on her knees with her wrists bound tightly behind her. A short, taut rope led from her bound wrists to where her ankles were crossed and tied together, causing her knees to splay out, her back to arch painfully.