= 15. =
 In a hideous, grinding voice—a high-pitched witch’s snarl—Marsha said, "As soon as I get Josie off me, Martin, I am going to lead you outside and feed you to the fishes of the sea. The storm is perfect because it will bring up the bottom feeders, who will feast on the pieces of you that I carve off for their lovely cuisine."
As she spoke, she waved the knife. It twirled around in a wide, twinkling circle, and caused a red gash to appear on her other arm. She shrieked and looked at blood pouring from a cut that ran across her forearm.
Screaming, she ran into the kitchen and could be heard opening and slamming drawers. "Bandages! Antibiotics!" she screamed. "I am bleeding. He did this to me, the bastard. Martin, you murdering bastard! You stabbed me."
As he listened, Martin kept tilting to the right until, finally, gravity took hold of him and he pitched face-down onto the coffee table. His face was just two or three feet from where she had sat. On a decorative wooden shelf above a lamp table sat the bottle of Angostura Bitters. Beside it sat the half empty glass of reddish soda water mixed with bitters. That in itself was a totally normal, safe bartender’s remedy for stomach upset. Next to it was an amber prescription bottle with its white lid off beside it. Squinting, Martin could make out the name of the drug she had slipped into his tea: Xanax.
Luckily he had only taken two or three sips of the hot tea and brandy with the drug mixed in, or he might be out cold.
With what little life was left in his arms and legs, he tried to push off, to stand up.
Instead, he fell sideways into the space between the coffee table and the couch where he had sat.
She was still screaming in the kitchen. He heard her throwing things, heard the crash of splintering glass as she pitched bottles and glasses about, and cups and saucers no doubt, working herself into a frenzy of madness.
He reclined with one cheek pressed against the filthy rug that had never been vacuumed. He lay helplessly, inhaling the smells of cat crap and muddy shoes, of spilled drinks and rotten food. There were huge dust balls under the couch. He wished he could crawl under the couch for safety, but his body wouldn’t let him.
Distantly, the sound of her angry yelling could be heard rising to a shrieking climax, a ranting and raving crescendo.
There, directly ahead of him, lay a syringe. Next to it was a long white cardboard container with all sorts of cautionary labels. As nearly as he could make out, it was a dose of generic adrenaline—the kind used in operating rooms to poke directly into the heart of patients in cardiac arrest. It was a last resort, aside from defibrillating shocks, to try and get the heart pumping again. It was also mixed with Xylocain and Novocain in dentists’ offices to speed the numbing drug through a patient’s system.
Summoning all of his might, Martin inched his right hand up, one centimeter at a time, until his twitching, numb fingers closed on the syringe. He had lost almost all coordination, so his next maneuver would be hit or miss, live or die. With great effort, grunting, he turned the syringe around so that it faced him. Clutching his fist around it, he pulled it toward himself. Faster and faster it went, until he could feel a pricking sensation under his shoulder blade.
Immediately, he felt his numbness tempered with electric sparking sensations. His nervous system was fighting a war between numbness and stimulation. He saw flashing lights. He felt his legs and arms tremble as adrenaline surged through his blood stream. With it came anger at this crazy woman or, more likely, at whoever had let her loose from some institution for the dangerously insane.
In lurching motions, desperate jerking motions, Martin heaved himself erect.
With Frankenstein movements, he rose up.
He fell down, making glasses crash somewhere nearby. He hoped he was not cut.
Looking down, he saw that his thick hoodie must have deflected shattered glass from a broken brandy snifter filled with green pothos plant.
He lurched from one support to another, heading toward the door.
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Thank you for reading the first half (free, what I call the Bookstore Metaphor). If you love it, you can (easily and safely at Amazon) buy the whole e-book for the painless price of a cup of coffee—also known as Read-a-Latte (hours of reading enjoyment; the coffee is gone in minutes, but the book stays with you forever). You can also get those many hours of happy reading from the print edition for the price of a sandwich (no, I don't have a metaphor for that, like a 'sandwich metaphor?'). To help the author, please recommend this book your friends, and also post a favorable (five star!) review at Amazon, Good Reads, and similar online reader resources. Thank you (JTC).
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