The Witness

In the last moment of his life, before his car smashed into the oncoming truck, a very drunk Ricky Chambers had time for one last thought.

“Who’s that hot chick in my back seat?”

The woman that appeared in the back mere seconds ago would have killed him for referring to her as a chick. If he survived this crash. But he wasn’t going to. Of this she was certain, otherwise she wouldn’t be there.

The car folded like an accordion. Ricky’s body did not fold like an accordion. It folded more like a tomato.

Freija Hafstein sat amongst the carnage, unmoved by the laws of physics. Metal twisted and shrieked around her. Shattered glass sprayed right through her. The seat lurched forward, leaving her in a comical position with nothing holding her up. Anyone witnessing the scene would liken her to a cartoon character in mid-air, ignoring gravity.

But the only witness was Freija herself. Here to record another demise, thus ensuring that Ricky Chamber’s soul would not clutter up that realm between life and death. Would not mope around, insisting it hadn’t really died. That perhaps the airbag would have saved him, or some other such miracle could come to pass.

Her testimony, delivered across the ether, eliminated any arguments. No, the airbag could not have saved him. It did its best. It functioned as designed. Had the numbers in the force equations been more in Ricky’s favour, the airbag might have proved more effective. But the numbers were not in his favour. The equations determined that Ricky’s head finished up embedded in the truck’s grill. Most of it, anyway.

After texting her report, Freija walked away from the wreckage. The truck driver hung over the front of his smashed cab, groaning. He was not her concern, as he would not die today. She straightened her black pencil skirt and white blouse. She pulled the hairpin from her tight bun and shook her hair loose. A piece of windshield glass fell out of her hair with a soft clink onto the asphalt. It glittered in the evening sun.

“That’s not right.” She thought. “That glass should have gone right through me. I have no physical mass here.”

Dread settled over her. To spend eternal life witnessing death was one thing. But being an actual, solid part of this godforsaken world was quite another. As she walked to the scene of an impending murder in the next town, she hoped this interaction with the physical world was a mere aberration.

—-

A nude Adam Reynolds hung from the wooden trellis attached to the outside wall of his lover’s bedroom. Heavy rain pelted him, making the wood slick and hard to hold. Inside, Mrs Fiona Barrington hastily dressed and gathered Adam’s clothes in her arms before throwing them out the window after him. His jeans hit him full in the face. The trellis groaned. Adam groaned in reply.

Ex-con Mr Barrington, responding to a tip off from one of Fiona’s enemies at her work, mounted the stairs two at a time, pulling his Ruger SR nine millimetre from its shoulder holster. He burst through the bedroom door in time to see his wife throwing clothes into the storm outside.

“Doing a bit of spring cleaning, are we?” He asked with a sneer, marching over to the window.

The trellis gave up under the strain. It peeled away from the wall. A protesting clematis plant held it briefly in place, before surrendering. Adam wailed as he fell. A pitiful noise from a pitiful human, soon to die. He crashed through the roof of the glasshouse below. Shards of glass sliced through his nude flesh like proverbial knives through butter.

Mr Barrington leaned out of the window above, laughing with delight at the demise of his wife’s lover. For good measure, he emptied the clip of his gun into the prostate body below. In court, he’d claim self defense and his god given right to defend his property.

Freija stood in the rain, watching the entire scene play out from a corner of the garden. She frowned for a moment. The sequence of events made this one a little hard to classify. An amateur witness might suggest “Death by misadventure”, determining the cause of death to be the twenty-foot fall into panes of glass. Plus, the floor of the greenhouse was cement, and the victim appeared to have fractured his skull.

But unlike Adam, Freija hadn’t come down in the last shower.

She was a professional and did not take shortcuts. Squinting at the window, the greenhouse, and Adam’s body, she decided the initial fall might have been survivable. Albeit with life-threatening injuries that would demand immediate intensive care.

Freija walked over to the body. Adam’s nudity helped her identify three bullet wounds. An enraged Mr Barrington wasn’t a very good aim. The seven other bullets had missed Adam, dealing irreparable damage to a pumpkin, a plant pot, and a garden gnome. The latter would live the rest of his days without a right ear.

Of the three shots that were on target, the first had blown away most of Adam’s scrotum. The second was a gut shot, perforating the bowel. But the third was what Freija liked to call the money shot. It had struck the hapless Casanova in the throat, severing a carotid artery. No amount of immediate intensive care was going to solve that problem.

And so Freija reported this one as a murder. The artery severing bullet had sealed this one’s fate, not the fall.

She texted her report at lightning speed into her phone and tucked it back into the waistband of her skirt. Not that the cause of death made much difference. Either way, Adam’s soul would have little argument. There were no miracles here. No loopholes. He was dead as a dodo, as the humans said.

Or was he?

Adam groaned, gasped, and coughed. A wet, gargling cough that spat bright arterial blood all over his chin. Freija walked closer, puzzled. Thunder boomed overhead, but she also heard police sirens drawing near. She needed to confirm this idiot’s death, to make sure she hadn’t sent an erroneous report. Then she best leave. Even though the police shouldn’t be able to see her, that piece of windshield glass had stuck in her hair this morning and it still unnerved her.

As she bent over the coughing, wheezing Adam Reynolds, her phone buzzed, vibrating right against her tailbone. She pulled it out and wiped the rain off its screen, to read…

“Message undelivered. Recipient’s mailbox is full.”

What the hell did that mean? Never in her thousands of years as a witness had that occurred. She pressed SEND again, and the reply was almost instantaneous. The same message.

The police sirens grew louder. Adam was struggling to his feet. Blood flowed from the cuts and holes in his body, making swirling pink rivers where it mixed with the rain.

“What… what happened?” He wheezed, one hand clutching his open neck, the other cupping his ruined scrotum.

Freija thought for a moment that he must be asking a rhetorical question of himself. Or his god. He couldn’t be addressing her. She was invisible to mortals. But his eyes met hers and it was clear. He could see her.

This couldn’t be happening. Apart from her sudden failure to remain invisible in this world, the mortal at her feet should be very much dead. There was more blood outside of him than inside.

“You should be dead.” She replied.

“Charming!” Adam coughed as he tried to stand. He looked down at himself, at the carnage wrought upon his body. “Although you might be right.”

Red and blue lights flashed through the rain as the first patrol car swung into the Barrington’s drive. Freija made an instant decision. She reached out and grabbed Adam by the wrist. The touch of a mortal sent a jolt up her arm, and she shivered.

“Never in a thousand years,” she thought.

She wrenched him to his feet and pulled him out of the smashed greenhouse and into the back garden. “Right, you’re coming with me until I can figure this out. I expect you’ll die soon anyway, but I need to be sure.”

“Again, charming,” said Adam, trying hard to keep up.

The immortal woman, in soaking wet business attire, dragged the mortal man, naked, dripping with water and blood, through the Barrington’s generous back garden. A wooden picket fence presented no obstacle as she smashed a section of it flat with a kick. This sudden ability to exert force on objects had its advantages.

“Jesus, you’re one tough lady,” said Adam, tripping over the fallen pickets.

“Yes, well, that’s what Jesus said, actually,” Freija muttered, and blew wet hair away from her mouth.

The two crashed through another garden before emerging onto a street.

“Slow down,” Adam moaned. “I’m dropping bits of myself back here.”

After turning a corner, Freija slowed, satisfied they’d escaped the scene unnoticed. For now. The heavy rain and darkening sky provided excellent cover, even for the strange spectacle they made.

“How are you feeling?” She asked her captive.

“Eh? Pretty good, considering my balls are mostly blown away, there appears to be a gaping hole in my neck, and..” Adam scrunched his nose and tilted his head.” There are weird squelchy things going on in my guts.”

Freija was unimpressed.

“So you don’t feel you’re about to die?”

“No… I don’t. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Humph! Well, we keep going, I suppose. But I can’t have you looking like this. Where’s the nearest medical facility? Not a big hospital. A small day surgery that will be closed.”

“How should I know? I don’t even live in this town. I never keep my girlfriends too close to home.”

“Oh, how clever of you. Shame you can’t be clever enough to pick ones without gun-toting husbands.”

“What can I say? I love a challenge.” Adam grinned through blood streaked teeth. “Who are you anyway?”

Freija determined the near-dead mortal didn’t deserve an answer. She pushed him against a hedge and consulted her phone. The nearest place that might suit her needs was three blocks away. A veterinary clinic. It should be closed by this time.

“Come on. It’s a short walk. Try not to leave any of yourself behind.” She pulled Adam along again.

They gained access to the vet practice by simply kicking the door in, such was Freija’s strength.

Adam examined his fresh cuts. “More wounds for the collection.”

“And you still don’t have any pain?” Freija asked as she stepped into the building.

“No. It’s very weird.”

“You can say that again.”

She reached a tentative finger to a light switch and cringed at the sensation of touching cool plastic. Tactile against her yielding skin. Different to kicking down the fence and door. More… intimate. A fluorescent bulb flickered to life. Her captor frowned at her trepidation.

“And there was light!” Adam grinned, “Well done. You have mastered the skill of flicking a switch.”

“You’re a real smart-arse, you know that?” Freija dragged him through a large treatment room to an adjoining surgical suite, flicking more switches on the way. “I can see why people might want to shoot you. Even if you weren’t bedding their wives. Can you get up on that table?”

Adam struggled aboard the stainless steel surgical table. Gobs of congealed blood dribbled from his belly wound, splattering to the floor. “Why didn’t we go to a normal hospital? I’m not a dog, you know?”

“That’s a matter for debate. But now isn’t the time. Until I figure out what’s going on, I need to make you presentable. I don’t want to draw attention to us.”

“Oh, so you’re a doctor? Or a vet? Or what?” He lay back on the table, shielding his eyes from the glaring surgery lights mounted on a long arm above.

“I’m a Witness.” Freija said as she selected items from nearby wall racks. A curved needle, a plastic cassette of suture material, swabs, and bandages.

“Well, yeah, I suppose you are. But I don’t want to press charges or anything.”

“How big of you. But I’m not that kind of witness. Now be quiet while I sew you back together.”

Freija bent over Adam’s torso and recoiled.

“Oh my god, I can smell!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I think he shot me right in the guts.”

“No, I mean, I can smell everything.” Freija leaned on the table, trying to comprehend events. She put down the needle, trailing a long thread of black suture, and checked her texts again. The same “Mail box full” text flashed on the screen. She sighed and went back to work.

“None of this is right. Not right at all.” She mumbled, shaking her head.

With a deft hand, Freija sewed Adam’s wound closed. She did not repair the bowel. This was not to be a lifesaving operation. This man should be dead. The work was cosmetic only, but her professionalism did not allow her to rush the job with crude stitches.

She moved to his neck and repeated the repair job while he tilted his head back.

“Could be I’m dreaming,” he said. “I’m going to wake up soon. Next to Fiona or Francis, or whatever her name was. Oh, but what if everything happens again, like that movie, you know? Groundhog Day? That would suck. That’s the last time I want to fall through a glass house and get shot up. Even if she was a nice screw.”

“Shut up, for god’s sake. I can’t think!” Freija whacked him around the ear. Adam shouted, “Ow” but rubbed the side of his head in puzzlement. “Wait, that didn’t hurt either. Weird.”

“More’s the pity! Now, open your legs. I need to fix that mess down there.”

“Shouldn’t you buy me dinner first?”

Whack! Another cuff around the ear finally silenced the patient.

Soon there was almost more suture than skin holding the idiot’s genitals together. But she decided it would suffice.

After the application of swabs to prevent leakage and bandages as final cover, Adam looked like someone who’d suffered a rather serious accident. There was no way of knowing that his wounds should have been fatal.

“Clothes next,” Freija announced. “It will be a blessing to cover up that bare ass of yours.”

“I bet you love it, really.” Adam jumped down from the table, a new spring in his step.

A quick search of the facility revealed a staff room. A rack of Vet Nurse’s green smocks and pants had Adam groaning.

“I can’t wear those! I’ll look stupid.”

“More stupid than you look now?”

He didn’t answer, only sighed and struggled his way into the biggest set he could find. The pants still finished a few inches above his ankles and clung tightly to his repaired manhood.

“That looks painful,” said Freija, eyeing the tight bulge.

“Nope. Still doesn’t hurt.” he flopped down on a cheap plastic chair.

“Maybe because you’re near death. Your pain receptors have already died, but the rest of you hasn’t got the memo yet” She turned to a kitchen counter, found a sponge and wet it under the faucet. Her white blouse had spatters of Adam’s blood in places, and some general grime from their hurried escape.

“I’ve been thinking.” She said as she scrubbed. “Physiologically, you lost too much blood back there to support life. And yet you have a weak pulse. I checked when sewing you up. Your heart hasn’t given up pumping what little blood you have left. But the systolic pressure must be way too low. And yet you appear cognisant and alert. So your brain is functioning well too. At least in the context of how well it functioned beforehand.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I think the dying process had started. But because I wasn’t able to send a witness report, you aren’t yet classified. You’re in limbo.”

“You mean I’m undead, like a zombie?”

Freija paused, thinking.

“Close enough. But more alive than one of those. They can’t talk, can they? Whereas you can. An irritating difference.”

It was proving too difficult to clean the blouse while wearing it, so Freija undid the buttons and removed it, indifferent to Adam’s presence. He let out a low wolf whistle.

“Nice tits! Shame you hide them in that plain jane bra. You could pull off something much sexier.”

“I’ll pull something off alright, if you don’t shut up. A little thing I’ve recently repaired.”

Adam moved his legs closer together.

---

(I am stuck with this story, mainly because I don't know where to take it next, but also because I'm worried the tone isn't quite right. And it might be trying to be too many things. The friction between Adam and Frieja might not work either. This is probably because there was no real plan or intention. It was very pantsy, and while that works sometimes, I think its left me floundering here. Anyway, I'm entering it into the "Not quite there" challenge because I think it fits the brief. tx)