Ken Douglas - Gecko

It rained just before dawn the day Jim Monday’s mind was invaded. The streets in Long Beach’s fashionable Belmont Shore district were slick and wet. Dew glistened from the palm fronds. A cool breeze drifted in off the ocean. A late morning chill hung in the air.

“ Where am I?” He heard the words in his head as if they were his own thoughts, but they weren’t. He stepped around a puddle, stopped at the crosswalk.

“ Where am I?” He heard it again, looked up, shaken. The light was still red.

“ Did you hear a word I said?” David asked. David Askew was both his lawyer and his best friend.

“ I’m sorry, I didn’t. My mind was wandering,” Jim said.

“ Okay, I’ll ask it again. Do you think there’s any chance you can talk her out of this?”

“ I tried, but she’s in love with him.” He spat the words as he glared across the street at the corner building of Cobb and Cobb, Attorneys at Law. In minutes he would be in the second floor office of Frank Cobb, the younger, signing half his life away.

“ Are you going to be civil?” David asked.

“ If she’s alone, yes. If Kohler’s there, I don’t know. I’m afraid I might hit the bastard.”

“ You better not.”

“ I know, but it tears me inside out.”

“ Just don’t hit him,” David said.

Jim glanced upward as the words were leaving his friend’s lips and his eyes locked onto Dr. Bernd Kohler, the man who had taken his wife away. Even from across the street, Jim could read the stare.

Hatred, pure and evil.

“ Calm down,” David said. “Keep your head and we’ll get through this.”

The light changed, they stepped into the street and started to cross, Jim fighting to control his anger.

“ Jump Back!” the voice in his head screamed and Jim Monday was taken back to a country he’d spent half a lifetime trying to forget. A place where when men yelled words like, Take cover, Drop, Hit the deck, or Jump Back, you obeyed, or you died.

Jim jumped back.

And his life turned into a slow motion horror show as a gray Buick Regal screamed around the corner, picked up David on its grille, smashing his body the way a handballer smashes the ball, sending the human missile flying twenty feet through the air, where it careened onto the sidewalk, stopping only when it blasted into the Spanish bay window of Cobb and Cobb, sending shards of glass hailing down, covering the body with red rainbow sparkles as the sun gleamed off the bloody glass.

It happened so fast and so slow.

“ Where am I?” He heard the voice again as he looked up to see the scowl on Kohler’s face. And he saw green as the scowl changed into a snarl. It was as if his whole world had shifted to green. Killing green. The green jungles of so long ago. The kill or be killed jungles.

“ What’s happening?” The voice wouldn’t stop.

Jim pushed it from his mind as he faced away from Kohler and moved toward the broken body of his friend, fighting to shake the numbness as he started across the street. He wanted to cry out, but couldn’t. Then he heard the thick German accent he had come to loath.

“ Out of my way, I’m a doctor.”

Jim turned and saw Bernd Kohler, shoving through the crowd, his shoulder length, gray hair flying in the breeze, glowing in the sun. Julia was trailing in his wake, wearing an expensive summer dress, one of her many designer creations.

They approached David’s body at the same time, wife, husband and lover. Kohler bent over the body and Jim Monday’s mind clicked out of shock. He watched as Kohler reached for David’s lifeless pulse. Then clarity struck him. Kohler watching from above. The hatred in his eyes and all of a sudden the green came back. Kohler seemed to be covered in it. An evil green. The man’s mouth was open wide, snarling words with green tinged teeth.

And now Monday knew. It was as if his subconscious had painted the world green, making it obvious to him. Kohler had been waiting for the car. The doctor had tried to kill him, but had killed his best friend instead.

Rage roared through Jim Monday, ripped him raw. He saw the man for what he was. A cold killer after his money and his wife. Again he was back in the green jungles that he had fought so hard to forget. He turned from a reasoning man into a crazed kid soldier and he saw the enemy.

“ I can’t think like this.” Another thought that wasn’t his, but agony and anger forced it away.

He reached out to Kohler from behind, grabbed his silver hair in a tight fist, jerked the doctor to his feet. Kohler screamed as Jim spun him around. He screamed again when Jim smashed him in the face with a stiff left, catching the doctor halfway between the right cheek and his aquiline nose.

Then he delivered a punishing blow to the doctor’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. He was pulling his balled fist back for the killing blow, when a huge black arm snaked around his neck and another, with a mammoth hand attached, grabbed his fighting arm and locked onto it like a vice latched onto a piece of copper tubing, one mistake and the tube snaps.

The other officer wrapped a hand around Jim’s right wrist, the one still holding Kohler aloft.

“ Let him go,” a deep bass voice commanded.

Jim was powerless.

The two strong policemen had reacted with lightning speed to Jim’s attack on Kohler, saving the doctor’s life and saving Jim from a murder charge. There was no point in resisting. He relaxed his hand, relaxed his rage and sagged into the strong arms of a strong cop. The policemen, intent on restraining him, had forgotten about Kohler. When Jim let go of the doctor’s hair, he collapsed on the sidewalk with a bone cracking sound.

“ Shit,” the bass voice said, “that had to hurt.”

Jim hoped so.

He felt his arms being pulled behind his back. He heard, more than felt, the click of the handcuffs. Then there were sirens and more police telling everyone to get back, but none of it made sense to Jim’s fogged mind. He was marginally aware of being pulled away from the awful scene of David’s bloody body and the sight of his wife cradling the gasping doctor in her arms. He thought she might have been crying. He couldn’t be sure.

“ Lower your head,” someone commanded and Jim felt a slight pressure against the base of his skull, guiding him into the back of the police car.

“ This is not right.” The voice in his head again, but Jim Monday was in no condition to wonder about strange voices. The burly policeman started to close the back door of the cruiser and the voice screamed, “I can’t take anymore.” Jim Monday started to pass out.

“ No! Don’t turn out the lights! Don’t make it dark!” the voice screamed and with an effort driven by fear and rage, Jim rocked onto his back, pulling his knees to his chest. He screamed, thrust his legs forward, feet connecting with the door inches before it closed, catching one of the cops by surprise, busting him in the chest, like a powerful steam engine, knocking him back and onto his backside the way cowboy heroes did to cowboy bad guys all those years ago.

“ Jesus!” the other voice said, “are you all right, Washington?”

“ Get the son of a bitch, Walker,” the cop named Washington boomed. And Officer Walker yanked Jim out of the car, slamming him onto the pavement.

“ Put him back in the car,” Washington said.

Walker picked Jim up as if he weighed no more than a pillow.

“ Careful,” Washington added, “don’t break anything.”

Walker wasn’t careful. He tossed him into the backseat with too much force. Jim screamed as a sharp crack sent pain stabbing up his right arm.