No Hope for Gomez! (16 page)

38.

Blog entry: In a single, smooth movement, I dropped the folder to the floor and kicked it under the bed. Then I pulled some of the unfamiliar sexy underwear from a shelf and held it to my face. This way it might explain any residual guilt in my expression.

I turned to Dr. Hargrove, and said, “Oh, hi, honey. Didn’t hear you come in. How was your day?”

Dr. Hargrove stared at me. Her initial surprise quickly turned to anger. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

I carefully and precisely cursed the day Warren was born. Why hadn’t he warned me? If he’d given me a signal as she approached the house, I could’ve put everything away nicely. As it was, I had to think on my feet, which wasn’t something I enjoyed.

“Well,” I said, “I was just looking for some extra closet space.” I attempted to smile innocently, then decided I probably didn’t want to appear
too
innocent, as that might make me look like a really guilty person trying
not
to look guilty. So, in mid innocent-smile, I rearrange my features into a blank stare. The resulting shift must’ve looked terrifying for a moment.

“You were reading my files!” she bristled, ignoring my facial gymnastics. “I can’t believe you’d do that, Gomez! They’re clearly marked as trial files!”

“I wasn’t,” I said, “I was merely, eh… running my hands through your underwear.” I showed her the lacy bra I was holding. “You don’t mind do you? It’s just that I’ve always wanted to do that. But don’t worry, I washed my hands first.”

“I saw you, Gomez,” Dr. Hargrove said.

She no longer sounded angry, she sounded sad. That worried me even more.

“I thought I could trust you,” she said. “I thought you were a
good
guy.”

“You
can
trust me,” I said. “Of course you can. I was just worried, that’s all.”

“Worried?” She sat down on the bed. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “I told you those deaths had nothing to do with my trial. Why couldn’t you just believe me?”

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “But it’s okay, I know now.”

“It’s okay?”

“Yes. I understand. You’re completely innocent, the trial is innocent. Everything’s fine.”

“Really?” She cursed under her breath. “Please help me understand what part of you going through my personal stuff and completely contaminating my test data, as well as messing up my underwear drawer, is fine! Do you even realize what you’ve done? You’ve ruined everything, Gomez! You knew I couldn’t afford to lose any more test subjects, and what did you do? You went ahead and eliminated yourself from the trial!”

“Well,” I said, “when you put it that way, of course it’s going to sound bad. But, I mean, we don’t actually have to
tell
anyone. Nobody needs to know that I read about the trial.”

“You just don’t get it,” Dr. Hargrove said. “Please leave…” She stared at the ground, her voice no more than a whisper.

“What?”

“Leave, Gomez, and don’t come back.”

“Are you serious? Just because I read some papers? That could’ve happened at any time. It could’ve happened while I was looking for a shirt! Let’s just pretend this never happened…”

Dr. Hargrove shook her head. “You didn’t trust me,” she said. “You actually thought I’d put your life in danger. And then you stomped all over my work.” She pointed at the door. “There’s no point in staying, Gomez,” she said, “there’s no relationship here.”

Blog entry: I was stunned. My head was spinning. How had things gone so badly so quickly? It didn’t seem fair.

I looked down at Dr. Hargrove and wondered if I should maybe sit next to her, put an arm around her. I wondered what I could say to make it all better. Dr. Hargrove clenched her jaw and stared at the floor. It was time to leave. Clearly. You didn’t win a woman back by annoying her. Better to retreat and let her cool off. Give yourself time to think.

Went out into the hallway, feeling disoriented. I might’ve been in shock. I had never broken up with a woman this special before, this wonderful.

I looked around for Warren to tell him the good news and the devastating news, but he was nowhere to be found. I checked the kitchen, the office, the living room – no Warren. Strange. He must’ve gone outside, I hadn’t heard him leave, though.

I put my shoes back on and opened the front door. A cool night breeze brushed past my face. The porch was dark and empty and it occurred to me I hadn’t actually heard an exchange between Dr. Hargrove and Warren. If she’d come home to find him staking out her hallway, I’m sure there would’ve been some noise. Enough to alert me. Especially as Warren was 220 pounds, slightly green, and wore torn stockings over his head. But all had been quiet. Eerily quiet. I stepped out and scanned the street. What little of it was illuminated, was empty.

I was alone.

Several scenarios went through my head, none of them very positive. What could’ve made Warren leave without telling me? What could’ve made him invisible to Dr. Hargrove? I quickly concluded there was nothing good that could do that.

Tried to put the thoughts aside as I walked down the garden path. Checked the bushes from the corners of my eyes, not wanting to appear suspicious. I was actually beginning to feel very uncomfortable. What if Warren really
had
disappeared? He wouldn’t be the first person in my life to vanish inexplicably. And the next step, of course, would be for him to turn up dead. I really didn’t need that right now.

I walked on, slowly, carefully, listening for suspicious sounds. I tried to convince myself I was being silly, that it was no darker than when I’d arrived, and that there was no one out to get me. It didn’t make me feel any better, though.

I was right to be apprehensive, as it turned out; I never made it all the way out to the curb.

39.

Blog entry: First few moments, I didn’t even know what was happening. The streetlight I’d been heading for so carefully, suddenly disappeared. It blinked out. Then the street and the garden path went with it. They simply vanished, and for a moment I was suspended in weightless nothingness. Then reality flipped over and fell apart.

Blog entry: I was still trying to process all this when a sudden, scraping feeling crept up my body. Hard and relentless, it started at my legs and quickly worked its way up to my chest. I struggled to keep it from finding my face; something was trying to burrow its way into me through my skin!

Blog entry: My other senses returned slowly. I was aware of sharp, rough objects poking my stomach and legs. Subdued, muted shapes in black and dark grey moved around in my peripheral vision. My ankles were locked in place while my arms flailed about, touching cold, wet slithers.

Blog entry: “I warned you,” an angry voice said. It floated down from somewhere up high. “Didn’t I warn you?”

I wasn’t sure if the voice was reading my mind or if it expected me to answer out loud. I couldn’t speak, though, I was trying to keep the scraping away from my face, which wasn’t easy with gravity pivoting and pitching around me in crazy patterns.

“You just couldn’t do it, could you?” the voice said. It sounded very angry. “You just couldn’t stay away!”

The cold, wet slithers were made of grass. Common garden grass. My eyes had adjusted to the dark enough for me to identify them. They slid out from under me and shot away into the distance.

“I thought you of all people would listen, but you didn’t. You were just as bad as that Miller fellow. Hell, you were worse. At least Miller had the decency not to poke around in my business!”

Twigs and stray gravel poked and prodded me as I moved backward through another patch of shrubbery.

“You’re more like that cop,” the voice spat. “You just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Incessantly hunting for clues, looking for more information, nosing around in my affairs. Even when I started leaving you those messages on that meatpacking blog, it just wasn’t enough. Well, guess what, Gomez, now you get to find out
exactly
what happened to them!”

I tried to speak but a rough tug knocked my head into the grass and I got a mouth full of dirt.

“I hope you’re happy,” he said. “You’ll have four or five days to think about what you did. After that, your body will give up and you’ll die.” A laugh. “It’s going to be excruciating!”

Blog entry: He finally let go of my ankles. I turned and sat up, got my bearings.

He’d dragged me all the way to the back of Dr. Hargrove’s house – I recognized the shrubbery from when I was stalk-stalking her.

“Don’t bother screaming,” he warned, towering over me, his scar warping around his deranged smile. “Someone might actually hear you, and if they come to help, they’ll suffer the same fate. Even,” he growled, “your precious Christine.”

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about Dr. Hargrove.

“Wait!” I said. I tried to get up but he kicked me back down with a lightning fast move. His foot connected with my solar plexus before I even realized it had left the ground.

“You wouldn’t hurt her,” I mumbled, severely winded. “It’s all about her, isn’t it, Harry? All this stalking and killing. In your deranged mind, you still think Dr. Hargrove could love you.”

“It was just one bad date!” he growled. “She didn’t get to see what I have to offer, how good we would be together!”

“Apparently she saw enough.”

That earned me another kick. This time my breath caught for a full minute. I actually thought I’d suffocate on the spot.

“She was too busy with that damn trial of hers to give me another chance,” Harry continued. “And you test clowns, you were getting to spend all that time with her, poisoning her mind with your smart jokes and your scar-less faces.”

He gave me another kick. Square in my shoulder. He probably broke it but I was relieved he hadn’t gone for my solar plexus that time. As I fell back in the grass, I knew that would’ve killed me.

Blog entry: This guy wasn’t fooling around. He was going to get rid of me, and soon. I wanted to call out to Dr. Hargrove to get a gun or call the police, but I couldn’t risk it. For all I knew, Harry would love her as much dead as he did alive. He was clearly insane. So I had to talk my way out of this. And I had to do it fast, as there was no way I’d overpower him or manage to sneak away.

“We just broke up a few minutes ago,” I told him. “She dumped me. Kicked me out like I was merely her Tuesday afternoon monkey-poop scooper. You might as well let me go and avoid any more of those pesky investigations. Know what I’m saying?”

That earned me a fourth kick. Again to the shoulder. The pain was phenomenal.

“You think I was born yesterday? You think I’d fall for a trick like that?”

I bit back on the pain. “Hold on!” I gasped, “if you kill me now, it’ll take Dr. Hargrove months to get over me. Maybe even years. Why not let me do something to make her stop loving me? That’d be much faster. I could pee in her mailbox for instance, or write a nasty letter about her mother. What do you say?”

I cringed in anticipation of another kick, but it didn’t come. Instead, Harry put his hands around my neck and lifted me to my feet. All the air was forced from my body. I flailed around trying to kick him in the groin and thrust my thumbs into his eyes, but I hardly connected. There was no time; Harry’s forehead shot forward and hit me square on the nose.

For a few excruciatingly long seconds I was no longer sure I wanted to live at all. I just wanted the pain to stop, one way or another.

Blog entry: Blood ran down my face. I was only dimly aware of it; bells and whistles were going off in my head and gravity was playing tricks again. There was a sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Harry’s index finger sneaked up my neck to a painful point somewhere halfway up. It felt as if it was happening to someone else. I was strangely disconnected from my body’s struggle for survival. I hardly heard when Harry said,
“Nighty, night Gomez!”

I did see some shapes at that point, just after Harry fell to one side, limp, but it took a long time for them to come into focus. It took even longer for me to figure out what they were saying; the ringing in my ears refused to subside.

Blog entry: “Are you okay?” Moran shot me a worried glance as he kicked at Harry’s unmoving body. He made sure Harry wasn’t concealing any weapons. It didn’t matter, though, whatever Moran had done to him, had left him out cold.

“You don’t look so hot,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here pronto.” He turned to talk to someone standing in the dark behind him. “Warren,” he said, “get over here!”

A shape detached itself from the shadows and came over. “Look after this guy while I put some cuffs on the psychopath.”

40.

Blog entry: Moran dropped us off on his way to the police station. He thanked Warren again for calling him. Apparently, Warren had spotted Harry creeping into Dr. Hargrove’s garden when he was standing guard. He went out to investigate moments before Dr. Hargrove returned home. When he realized I might be in danger, he’d called Moran.

I went back to my own place – I was no longer on the run. I felt much better after a hot bath and some balm, could even move my shoulder a little, but I still went to see a doctor in the morning. He put my arm in a sling to give my shoulder some rest, said it would be fine in a few days.

Blog entry: Moran gathered evidence against Harry but when they tried to transfer the psycho, he attacked a guard and was shot attempting to gain control of a weapon. I should probably feel sorry for him, he obviously needed psychological help, but all I could think was; good riddance.

Blog entry: Dr. Hargrove was informed about what Harry had been up to. How he’d stalked her and was shot trying to escape police. She’d even been told about a struggle that took place in her backyard, but I’m not sure about the details they gave her. Whether she even knows how close I came to dying for her.

Fact was, she didn’t answer my calls and my name was no longer on the trial sign-in sheet.

Blog note: I still run my little antiques store. Hicks is there and doing well, most days. I keep blogging because Dr. Hargrove might come back one day. Maybe she’ll need a blog from a test subject who suddenly stopped the placebo trial cold turkey. Then I can help her. You never know.

Also, I kind of got used to blogging.

Blog note: Some evenings Warren comes over and we work on strategies for getting Dr. Hargrove to come back to me. We’ve been brainstorming for the better part of a month but so far we’ve come up with nothing but stupid ideas. We’ll get there eventually, one way or another. We’ll keep going until we finally run out of stupid ideas and start coming up with good ones.

It’s only a matter of time.

Dr. Hargrove will be mine again, mark my words: There’s Hope for Gomez!