A deadly truth revealed
Seriously, I would appreciate any help at all on this short story, it is for a contest and I would like to somehow make it shorter and better. In fact it needs to be shorter. Any suggestions?
It was a measured dance with death and a battle with time. His time in this world was drawing to a close, with the dreadful hand of death coming to snatch him away, to rip his soul from the world of the living, and bear him to whatever lay beyond. This was not a fight he could win. It was an uphill battle betwixt his will to live and his ever slowing heart.
As a man of sixty this was not how he would have pictured his death, but in spite of his efforts he feared that his end was imminent. It was almost laughable really. He, James Duke Williams, one of the most powerful men in the world would die in an all together pathetic manner; on the floor of his living room. Though there was little he could do about his predicament, the very thought being found in such a way riled him.
No one such as he deserved to die in such a wretched, dismal, and completely demoralizing way. He was completely incapable of movement, and the pain in his bowels was unbearable. In some distant part of his mind he knew that before his heart slowed to a complete stop the already immense pain would grow exponentially.
Whatever had been done to him had been put together by perhaps the vilest of human beings he had ever come in contact with. James knew not of his birth or station, his profession or even his actual name, in truth he didn’t even know what his assailant looked like. He had been accosted from behind, as only a coward was capable of, but before he could react he had been thrown to the floor face first, and from this position he hadn’t moved. His assailant’s voice had been that of a man’s, deep and ominous, like thunder in a valley. He remembered questioning the intruder asking him what he had done, and who he was, but he had gotten only arrogant and vague answers.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” James asked, in mounting frustration as he realized that he couldn’t move no matter how hard he tried. The intruder didn’t answer. “What did you do to me?” James cried, yet his wraith like companion, though still in the room as James could hear him take a seat in his expensive leather chair, remained silent. “Answer me!” James shouted, but he all got was a wintry silence. James screamed at him for several more minutes yet the outcome remained the same. Finally he swallowed his pride, and with a broken voice he asked.
“Please, can you tell me what you’ve done to me?” Behind him, James could hear the intruder laughing deeply and slowly, it lasted a while before he answered.
“I will not give you my name, and I will not tell what it is that I want, because whatever you have to offer has just now become mine. As for what I’ve done to you, I can tell you.” He paused as if in thought, then continued. “I have injected a syringe into the base of your skull, and at this point there are a great many nerves that carry messages from your cerebellum to the rest of your body. The cerebellum is imperative to muscle control and movement, this is the cause of your immobility, you can no longer send or receive messages to your muscles, and you are completely under my control. Your ability to speak is already failing you. Even as you spoke earlier there was a slight discrepancy in how you spoke then and how you spoke to your wife on the phone.
“As the effect continues you will find it more and more difficult to speak, your speech shall become barely perceptible or discernible. Consequently no one will hear your screams because you won’t be able to utter more than a mere whimper.”
“So what am I to do?” James asked and realized how difficult it had become for him to articulate his sentence.
“What are you to do?’ The man laughed again. “You are to do nothing, you are stuck there. I will not move you from your position, you will stay where I have placed you until a time of my choosing, and until then you can do nothing.” James snorted in a weak attempt at laughter.
“So is this what you planned for me? To waste away slowly on my living room floor while you plunder my home? No disrespect to your apparent intellect but that is the most absurd plan I’ve ever heard of.” There was a long silence, and James feared that the man would strike him dead then and there. But instead he replied, almost cordially.
“Did you like your tea?” James was confused and didn’t answer. “I most certainly hope that you did, because along with that amazing solution that is blocking the nerve receptors to your cerebellum, that poison that creeps slowly through your veins was administered to you through a glass of your favorite tea. And I’m sure that throughout the day you have felt maybe, a little off, a vague sense of sickliness, and if so you’ve become intimate with some of my handiworks attributes.
“Sweaty palms, cotton mouth, consistent headaches, and a horrible pain in your belly. Now you might have thought these things maybe a slight fever, even a little indigestion, but no, I am afraid that you are dying. You see, because as you moved about your heart, the marvelous muscle that it is, pumped blood throughout you body, spreading my horrendously effective creation. Now however, you are inactive as is humanly possible when living, and your heart is beating regularly, it need not exert any extra effort to pump blood to your muscles, and thus this poison slinks at a measured pace, and so as you stated before I am going to let you simply rot away on your living room floor, and for you it will be an inexorably painful experience.”
James mind went numb. The thought of rotting painfully away truly terrified him. But even in his state of complete misery he had to wonder just how the man could be capable of such savagery.
“Wh-wh-wa-why” the words were becoming difficult to utter, “Would you do this to me?”
The man did not answer but merely sat silently letting James mind wrestle with past events and people, wondering who or what he had done wrong to make this man hurt him so.
“Pl-llease, tell me w-wa-hy you’-oofve done this to m-me?” There was a moment of silence.
“Because it pleases me.” He answered, and with that James heard him stand up and leave the room behind.
Now hours later, James lay still immobile upon the floor, and still completely befuddled about the enigmatic man that had placed him in such a state. Clearly the man was insane. This James had already come to grips with. But why he had chosen him of all people to target he had no idea. In the distance he could hear things being moved about. He wondered just what the man was doing in his home. James was sure that his wife would be home soon, but without a doubt he knew that the intruder had already prepared for that. But James had an even deeper fear that the man had already killed his wife, and he was sure his daughter was dead, unless she had found her way to a hospital.
Tears came unbidden to his eyes and James wondered where it had all gone wrong, why he of all people was subject to such cruel and unusual punishment at the hands of a madman. As the tears continued to stream he heard footsteps coming in his direction. Desperately he blinked in an attempt to clear away the tears that had come without warrant but it was useless, the man had already seen him crying.
“Ah, I see that you have come to fully understand your impossible position.” Two large shoes stopped before James face, had James been in any other predicament he, being the gentlemen and lover of fine clothing that he was, would have complimented him on his taste in footwear. But at present he was in a rather difficult position, and the thought of complimenting such a man made him sick to his already pained intestines.
“Perhaps you would like to know why I have done this to you, or perhaps you would like to know what happened to your stunning daughter.” The man laughed deeply. “However many questions may be running through your mind right now I will only answer one of them and seeing that you are incapable of speaking I shall pick one of my choosing.” He paused as if in thought, but it was clear to James that it was all just a well thought out game to him, and that his ‘question’ had already been answered long before he had come.
“Hmm let’s think here, what questions are you dying to ask?” He paused as if to wait for James’ answer. “Well, I think I have a good one you’d like to ask. ‘Am I going to die here?’ that will require a straight answer, preferably a yes or no answer correct?” The man waited as if expecting an answer from James. “The answer is yes, you are going to die lying as you are, face first upon your living room floor completely helpless. But you‘re really asking yourself, ‘why did he do this to me?’ ‘Why would he want to harm me?’ the reasons behind my actions are irrelevant, they do not matter, the only thing that really matters is why I have let you live for so long.”
James was confused. “You see had I merely wanted you to die I would have simply killed you and made it look as if your wife did it, because it doesn’t take a genius to discover just how often you cheat on your wife.” A shock ran through James almost as jarring as finding out what had been done to him.
“So James still wondering why I’ve left you alive, because I’m pretty sure you have about another hour or so before the poison reaches your heart and you die.” Tears once again came unbidden to his eyes. “Ah, the tears again, well I am afraid no one is going to shed any for you at your funeral, because not only did I send to your wife all of the images of your scandalous affairs, but I also sent to all of your important cronies and associates what you’ve been doing.” James took in air sharply. “Oh, didn’t think I knew about that either did you? Sadly James I know everything you’ve done for quite some time, to the tax fraud, the murders, the extortion, and even how you stole money from that children’s health care fund.
“The list goes on and on and on. You are the embodiment of corruption. Your insides have corroded with the desire for money and power, fortunately for you though I have taken pity out on you and you will die before the police arrive to drag your limp body away in chains.” James now sobbed his every breath shook his body as tears ran from his eyes. “Look how pitiful you are, I’ve saved you from countless years in prison and still you cry, still you think of yourself as deserving fair and moral treatment, but that is not how this will end for you. When they finally arrive to arrest you, after they have broken down your door and run through all the rooms in the house they will find you lying face first upon the carpet, a ruined man who died upon his living room floor.
They will laugh at how lucky you were, until the coroners get their hands on your corpse, and they will find that you died a death filled with torment and pain, you see the real pain does not lie from the poison that slinks through your veins, but from the realization that everything you’ve worked to achieve has been completely destroyed, that no one will miss you, that you will die a criminal and everyone will remember you not with sorrow and pride, but with anger and disgust.
“As afore mentioned I have taken everything that you could possibly have to offer me, I have taken your life and ruined it, I have taken everything you have worked to achieve and ripped it to shreds before your very eyes, I have ruined your name, I have decimated the remnants of your family, and I have brought about your complete and utter destruction. You have nothing to offer me, I have taken everything from you and that is all that I require.” James watched as the shoes moved away from him and just as they were about to move out of his line of sight, the man stopped.
“Oh, and in case you were wondering you daughter is fine, though a little sick, but it was a taste of bad food nothing of my doing.” His laughter trailed him as he left the room, and James in agony heard it even still as the enigmatic man closed the door to the house leaving James to wallow in misery.
