Paul Jones - Extinction Point - The End

Rebecca Lacey woke up screaming. Her fingers twisted into claws that grasped at the cloth of her sodden, sweat soaked tee-shirt, bunching handfuls of the material until the shirt was pulled far enough up to expose the lean paleness of her damp belly. Her breath exploded in short, ragged, panting gasps as tears spilled over her scarlet cheeks and beads of perspiration dribbled over her naked arms and legs.

She heard her words as if from a distance, more pleading than spoken. “Oh… God! Oh… God.” A mantra of horror repeated over and over as her heart rattled behind her ribs, a terrified animal trying to escape its cage.

The dream — it felt so real — started out so wonderfully. She was somewhere beautiful. The half-remembered sensation of running her hands through long grass. Warmth. A wonderful light that permeated all things. And clouds. The scent of something so… she could not remember, there was no word to describe the wonderful fragrance.

And then it was all gone, ripped away from her in an instant and replaced by a horror so profound that her very breath froze in her lungs.

The knife .

She could still see it glinting in the light of the naked bulb that hung from the bare stucco ceiling of her apartment, the glass lampshade shattered on the floor where her head had smashed it into a hundred pieces.

The stranger had twisted the knife back and forth, back and forth, letting it glint and scintillate across her eyes, his face inches from her own, and his breath hot against her cheek.

She felt the frigid keenness of the blade as he traced its point from her forehead over the ridge of her nose and across her lips, sliding it down the curve of her throat until it reached her breastbone.

An everlasting pause and then:

Snick .

He had sliced away one of the buttons of her blouse.

A moan of terror had escaped her lips.

Snick. There was the next.

“Oh please, no. God. No,” she whispered.

He had worked his way through all of the buttons, his breathing becoming more and more rapid, and then, Oh dear God , and then he had… he…

Rebecca threw herself over the side of the bed and heaved a steady stream of vomit that spread in a rank pool across the carpet and splashed against her ghost-white skin.

She kept throwing-up until there was nothing left, just dry heaves that forced the breath from her until she thought she would choke to death. And, when finally that was over she started screaming. A shrill horrified ululation that escaped from deep down within her soul shattering the calm of the room before petering off to a low sobbing howl of pain and fear.

The door to her bedroom burst open. Between her wracking sobs of terror, she managed to lift her head towards the two people who now stood in the doorway and mumble through chapped, vomit caked, lips, “Mom… Dad… he killed me. He killed me.”

In the doorway, Mr. and Mrs. Lacey stood in their nightclothes and as the early morning sun shone through the bedroom window, framing them in a beam of dust-mote filled light, Jim Lacey, his eyes agog, fell to his knees and began to weep like a baby at the sight of his child. Sarah Lacey, her hair disheveled and tumbled, crossed the space between the door and her daughter in two quick bounds. Then she gently took Rebecca in her arms and held her until Becky could hardly breathe, all the while keening in her daughter’s ear, “You’re alive, praise Jesus. You’re alive.”

“…fine.”

Jim Baston blinked at the sudden change of lighting.

His skin tingled as though a light coat of static electricity played across it. There was an odd leaden fluttering sensation in his stomach and he felt as though he had come to a sudden abrupt stop after a long fall.

He breathed in. Leather, like expensive new shoes; the smell filled his nostrils.

The young store assistant stared back at him across the counter top. She looked to be about to speak, her rouged lips opened… and then closed again as a cloud of confusion passed across her face. Her brow knitted above brown eyes, the pupils of which had suddenly and fully dilated. The left side of her mouth lifted while the right side dipped down, her head tilted towards her right shoulder as though she was suddenly deep in concentration.

“I… I,” she stammered as the cloud of confusion turned rapidly into a storm of bewilderment that billowed and rolled with her expression.

“I’m terribly sorry but I… what were you saying?” A momentary pause in which he could have answered but did not, his own confusion freezing his tongue, arresting any possibility of a reply from him as his mind furiously tried to understand what was going on. The silence between the two strangers stretched out before she asked in a timid, apologetic, frightened voice, “Where am I?”

Auburn hair whipped back and forth across her face as she glanced frantically left and then right; panic now superseding confusion. Her cheeks flushed red as blood rushed to her head and Jim could see her breathing rate increase rapidly.

He regarded the confused woman standing across from him for a long second. His own head now cocked questioningly to one side. He was sure that he had a similar look of confusion on his face because he had no idea on God’s good green earth where he was or why he was here. He could not even remember how he got here. Panic began to claw its way out of its hiding place in the pit of his stomach, crawling on taloned fingers towards his throat.

The last thing he could remember was answering the phone to his agent. He had been talking to him just a second ago — the phone had been in his hand. It was New Year’s Eve. He had been out, had a couple of drinks and made it home sometime after midnight; exactly what time he couldn’t recall. A cold shiver of fear ran down his spine as a single thought filled his mind: Alzheimer’s. They could fix it nowadays of course but they had to catch it early enough to stop any damage. Once memories were lost to the disease, that was it, they were gone forever and if this was an episode of the disease, then how far had it progressed?

It had been four years since Jim had been to his doctor and he mentally kicked himself for not keeping those yearly appointments for his checkups. He swung around and took in his surroundings. He recognized nothing. This was not the comfortable bedroom he had been standing in seemingly only an instant before. Instead, he found himself next to a glass counter-top, on the other side of which stood the woman who looked as confused as he felt; three rows of display racks ran through a store that was lined top to bottom with expensive looking leather luggage; bags, women’s purses and crocodile skin briefcases. A rotating display unit off to his left was full of men’s wallets and a sign fixed to the top of the stand proclaimed finest calf leather in an elegant hand.

Behind the glass counter that separated them, the young store assistant had started speaking again, calling out as if to a lost child or dog, “ Steven? Alison?”

A disturbing edge of panic creeping into her voice each time she called out the names.

How the hell did I get here , he thought to himself. Where am I?

“Do you think I could use your phone?” he asked but the girl did not even register his question, her gaze sweeping over him like a searchlight and moving on having found nothing of interest.

“Steven? Alison?” The panic in her voice now pronounced.

“It’s just that I don’t seem to remember where I am. It’s just a local call,” he said. He was disturbed to hear a note of desperation in his own voice.