Josh didn’t move.
There was another pixelated flash with the volume completely turned off. Sen was jumping up and down, alternating between smashing his fists against his own bald skull and the console in front of him.
The next pixilated flash showed Sen as he leaned in close to Damni and whispered, “...Do you think I’ve obliterated his mentation? My Combi predicts only a four percent chance of survival if he doesn’t strike her down first...”
Josh slid over against the sidewall and away from Sadie, looking at her in horror. She turned slowly to him at the reduced speed of everyone else in the elevator. Her eyes widened in surprise for a brief moment—
A feeling of electricity suddenly flooded the elevator car.
Sadie straightened rigidly, and her whole body trembled as she oscillated back and forth from her heels to her toes. A few seconds passed, and then her shoulders relaxed. Her body language completely transformed as she adopted a stance that spoke of coiled strength and violence. She also moved a lot faster than all the other members of the elevator car—including Josh.
Sadie slightly turned her head and looked to the right and the left while reaching into her bag. With purposeful deliberation, she removed a new pair of scissors she must have just gotten from the school supply room on her lunch break. Josh couldn’t help but read the tag still on them, ‘$11.99! What a deal!’
Sadie raised the shears in her hand, expertly adjusting her fingers on the ten-inch-long blades to just below the finger loops, adopting a hammer grip. She pointed the tips of the shears at Josh with unmistakable hostility and a wicked smile that showed way too many of her age-stained teeth.
“Oh, sweetheart! You’re not supposed to be here, are you? Well... you’re first, then!” Josh could barely see the scissors as she lunged at him.
Like most kids raised by the Catholic Archdiocese in the inner city, Josh had been offered few extracurricular opportunities. But among them was swimming at the YMCA or training at the local parish’s gym. Josh had chosen the gym. As the years went by, training in boxing and grappling by volunteer coaches from the parish had become part of his routine as a younger man. But he had never faced anyone who moved as fast as Sadie was moving right now.
The scissors came down one-two-three-four times from all directions at his face. Already holding his briefcase to his chest with both hands, it had been instinctual for him to duck under it. The thick law books inside were what ultimately stopped the tips of Sadie’s shears.
Sadie withdrew the blades even faster than she impaled them. They screeched sharply against the case’s metal frame as they went in and out. The crazed granny was working Josh over with an enthusiasm and capability that he would have admired if he wasn’t the one getting pounded. He found himself blinking sweat out of his eyes, and his balance became skewed from the punishing blows as he fought to keep his briefcase between him and an ignominious death by craft supplies.
Broadening his stance to gain a better footing and offset his wavering balance, Josh became somehow extraordinarily aware of a subtle shift in the center of balance of the senior-bus-card-wielding geriatric who was assaulting him. Her next attack unfolded like a mandate from hell–as inevitable as it was horrifying.
Still actively blocking the rapidly striking scissors, Josh only had the freedom and energy to widen his eyes in abject terror as Sadie’s spindly leg snapped out from under her sensible dress and caught him squarely in the proverbial stick and stones.
Whether it had been through adrenaline or Sen and Damni’s divinely administered juju, he'd been able to ignore the building aches and pains of combat up until that point. However, the old lady’s supernaturally infused kick to his nethers made Josh’s dangly bits ring like church bells on Easter morning.
His reflexive thought of, God, this is gonna hurt, was all the attention Josh could spare on the pain supernova that was exploding into existence in the general region of his groin. A maniacal grin spread over Sadie’s face as she never let up her blistering scissors assault from above. Keeping Josh’s mind and arms engaged in holding and blocking high with the briefcase to prevent multiple cranial perforations in all the wrong places... and of necessity, leaving his midsection and below the belt completely unguarded. Twice her knobby, varicose knees impacted his solar plexus accompanied with another sphincter-puckering attempted murder of his unmentionables... He only barely avoided said catastrophe by pivoting his hips on a purely primal instinct.
Having experienced cheap blows before, Josh expected the wobble of his legs to increase, followed soon later by expansion of the pain, weakness, and most likely vomiting. Lots of vomiting.
In truth, the briefcase was a mixed blessing. While it protected Josh’s face, the downside was that it blocked his vision, required both his arms, and left him vulnerable to what Sadie did with the rest of her seemingly independently operated appendages. In fact, he was beginning to believe that the woman was part octopus. Her left foot hooked into the crook of his right knee and then she leaned back hard, pulling said knee out from under Josh. Because of his greater size and strength, Sadie had needed to overextend her pull-back to rock him, which led to the unintended consequence of bowling over the rather heavyset woman in the left front corner of the elevator. The fat lady had her face slammed into the side wall. Due solely to physics, she rebounded and crashed back into Sadie, interrupting her planned overhead hammer blow and pushing her back at Josh.
At the same time, Josh had lost the support of his right knee and was in the process of lowering his briefcase to a more central position. He decided to let the case’s edge lead the way and push Sadie away as he fell.
Even as a killing machine, Sadie had instinctive reactions against letting heavy objects fall on her. Among these objects included a hefty, off-balance woman tilting precariously her way and a 200-pound man with a large steel-framed leather briefcase. Unfortunately for him, she continued to focus her attention on Josh. She punched out with the sheers with terrifying force, embedding them into the briefcase and forcing Josh onto his back foot. From there, she would follow up with more hammer blows to his head now that the case was midlevel.
However, with whatever next-level acceleration Sadie had received, her blow against Josh’s case was significant. Not only did she manage to force Josh away, but she lifted him off the ground, throwing him into the steel sidewall of the elevator. His body caused a loud thunk, which rang in the car and must have reverberated up and down the elevator shaft.
It appeared that Sadie had expected to push Josh off his feet. And, in fact, he was. But she wasn’t likely expecting Sadie’s right hand, via the two fingers instinctually hooked through the shear’s finger-loops along with her right arm and the rest of her much smaller body, to follow Josh across the elevator when she sent him flying.
The laws of physics pulled the much smaller woman off the floor as well. Instantly realizing the mistake, Sadie moved to reverse her grip to the previous hammer hold and bring the shears back for another series of attacks. But her attempt to adjust was far too late to make a difference.
Slamming Josh’s head into the elevator’s metal sidewall rang his bell. But without question, he had heard the squeal of steel on steel when Sadie had flung him. He also felt her pull hard on the scissors, almost yanking the case out of his hands.
A shocked look sped across Josh’s accelerated features as an understanding permeated his mind... Her scissors are stuck in my case’s metal frame! A smile touched the corners of his mouth as he realized the opportunity in front of him.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
It would be a lie to say there wasn’t still a tiny part of Josh’s brain yelling at him to stop and think about what was going on. Along with, what in the name of all that is holy had he been doing since his sudden arrival in the Twilight Zone?’
Look at the facts, the analytical side of his brain said to him:
—You are suddenly hearing multiple voices in your head.
—You are imagining that you are moving faster than everyone else around you.
—And, only seconds after the first two points, you are about to slam your briefcase down on Sadie’s head in a public elevator. A woman in her late sixties that you have known for the last six months. An old lady who was an all-in-all nice person until she started trying to perforate your face like Anthony Hopkins in a dress.
Screech... Screech... Screech!
Without a doubt, Josh knew logically that something was wrong with what was happening.
Several possibilities came to mind. He could have had a psychotic break. Someone could have slipped something into his coffee this morning. He could be having a very vivid nightmare... Though that last one was unlikely, given the level of pain that was beginning to sneak its way through his shock and… whatever was going on with his body to allow it to continue operating despite the abuse Sadie was dishing out.
If any of this was really happening, there was a better than middling chance he would get locked up in an insane asylum as a brief detour on his way to the electric chair. As a criminal lawyer, Josh knew that Florida was one of the southern states that still enforced the death penalty for excessive crimes.
I could fry for this!
But... and this was a big but... Josh smirked, his shaken consciousness finding humor in the double entendre before he told the small part of his brain to shut the hell up.
The fact of the matter is that Sadie has definitively tried to kill me numerous times in the past few seconds. On top of this, she’s hit me in the nads… A lot more than I’m willing to tolerate, even from an old lady!
And then there was the fact that Josh was pissed. Not just regular pissed. He was race-car-in-the-red, mushroom-cloud-laying, motherfucking pissed! And not just at Sadie... At everything. However, this whole alien-mind-screaming, Psycho-slashing, surreal event was an excellent place to put the blame for all the crap that had been coming down on him the last few years of his life.
Frustration with his wife Miranda and her family was at the top of that list. The rage from being separated from Sophie when she was so small and unprotected from sick people like his mother and sister-in-law boiled to the surface of Josh’s decision-making. It was fair to say Josh had some significant unresolved issues that had built up. And, unfortunately, at least for Sadie, there didn’t seem to be an encounter group in the immediate vicinity for an intercession.
No one had ever accused Josh of being a slow thinker or unable to react in a crisis. This quality had helped him as a child, and it helped him here. Josh also absently noted that the hormone acceleration blender Sen had turned his mind into was most likely a factor that was helping him quickly decide what to do concerning his whole current Sadie-Is-Trying-To-Kill-Me issue.
His decision was made; there was only one real choice for Josh: Sadie had to go!
Before Sadie could regain solid footing from her overextension, Josh switched his grip on the case with both hands and slammed it down on her head—once, twice, three times a lady.
She might have been much faster than him, but despite whatever power she’d received–he’d received his own, and she wasn’t stronger. He was a lean 200 pounds at six foot two compared to Sadie’s five foot four and dumpy in sensible heels. Physics was still not on her side. And one thing Josh had learned as a young man, physics was a true bitch when she wanted to be.
Sadie had also made a mistake in refusing to let go of the scissors as Josh slammed the case down on her. The thin bones in her hand and arm shattered with every hit. On the third blow, ominous snapping sounds also came from her neck, followed quickly by her body dropping into a pile of splintered bones and shallow gasps on the floor.
Josh’s harsh breaths filled the elevator as he realized Sadie was down. He lowered the briefcase with the scissors still sticking out of its top left corner. Due to how fast he and Sadie had been moving, only now did the others in the elevator start reacting to the mayhem before them. But their actions were still moving like a slow-motion scene from an old-school movie. Josh heard them speaking in long, drawn-out sounds. But at this point, he was still so amped up that he couldn’t concentrate enough to give the drawn-out words any meaning.
However, there was one voice that still came through. “You did it! I can’t believe it! The probability models predicted that your death– um– your likely failure– was a near-statistical certainty!” Sen’s voice rang out in Josh’s head. Clearly, as surprised as Josh was that the old lady hadn’t savagely murdered him, “Err, I mean, good job, mortal! Err... Joshua!”
A brief pause ended with Sen speaking even faster and more concerned. “—I need you to stop Sadie from expunging—dying! If she does, the chaos agent can abandon his Ka domination of her and escape to the other sapients inside that ridiculous contraption, and you will eventually be worn down and most definitely killed– Right now, you have an opportunity to trap this evil inside that old lady. Quick! She is going into cardiac arrest! Do you know how to reactivate her function?”
As his vision dimmed, Josh shook his head no to Sen’s anxious question.
“No? Oh, ahhh... okay! We will send the information to your cortex so you can implement it! This may… hurt. From what we’ve experienced so far, you have other talents than exceptional mental function.”
Josh smirked up in irritation at the sky for a second, but he didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with Sen’s snide comment at the moment. Having already been mind-jacked, he was much more worried about what Sen was going to do to his brain. He’s sending the knowledge of how to perform CPR? Directly into me?!?
Josh had no freaking idea how to do it. He had seen it on TV. But that was it. Suddenly, there was a force like unbelievably strong hands squeezing his head. The heavy pressure felt as if those same fingers had crashed through his skull and were crushing his brain from all sides. Josh couldn’t breathe, and his vision doubled for several seconds. But it didn’t let up. The intensity doubled and then doubled again! Absently, Josh felt the steady trickle of blood running in sticky tracks from his ears and eyes. A low-pitched squeak accompanied the slow trickle of air sliding from nonfunctioning lungs over a locked jaw. Strange odors, sounds and lights that Josh wasn’t able to identify burst like skyrockets in what felt like the actual fragmentation of his mind . . . And then a fresh, cold stream of cool blue normalcy flowed over the brokenness, making him whole. Josh had no explanation for what he had just experienced . . .
. . . But he did know CPR: The airway, breathing, and circulation assessments, cardiac compressions, chest thumps, even the administration protocols of epinephrine, atropine, and lidocaine if he had had them. Josh got down on his knees and moved to resuscitate the elderly lady... Sadie... who, unlike just a few seconds ago, now seemed so very small and frail. Part of his brain still knew that no matter what, Sadie surviving this was a good idea for him. It was very unlikely he would have to ride the lighting if Sadie was still kicking, so to speak. His arguments of self-defense may or may not hold water. Josh didn’t think for one moment at the speeds they were moving he could rely on any eyewitnesses that he had been defending himself against a frail sixty-plus-year-old woman ... Maybe the elevator video would help? Regardless, keeping her alive was the way to roll.
Josh’s hands moved as they expertly straightened out Sadie’s airway. Her head lolled grotesquely on a crushed cervical spine as he aligned it with her upper body.
At some point, Sadie had evacuated her bowels and bladder. A wet stain spread on the front of her thin skirt, and the elevator had already filled with pungent odors. Ignoring this, Josh made sure Sadie’s tongue wasn’t blocking her esophagus and put his index finger on her wrist’s pulse point. He soon learned that Sadie didn’t currently have a pulse. Josh then gave her fifteen chest compressions, sharp and strong. Her pulse still hadn’t returned. He gave another fifteen compressions, and then he did it again. Finally, Sadie’s pulse returned, even if it was weak.
How much time had gone by? Josh was far from certain. But, when he had finished resuscitating Sadie, the elevator doors had opened, and a crowd had gathered at its front. The other occupants had also run out screaming as they likely headed for security and, hopefully, to call an ambulance.
“Well done... again, mortal... er, Joshua! There is much I want to tell you. However, the biological acceleration we have enacted in your body is about to wear off. When this happens, you will experience a severe decrease in function and likely lose all conscious mental capacity.”
The lights were steadily growing dimmer. Josh’s hands felt heavy, blunt, and numb.
“... But do not worry! Death is a much lower probability than when you faced the chaos agent! Twenty-three percent at a maximum by our best calculations.”
The silhouettes of people surrounding Josh began to stretch out. They also seemed to move from standing on the ground to somehow standing on the sidewalls.
Josh’s fried nerves didn’t even feel it when he collapsed onto his face over Sadie’s body.
Sen continued to speak words that made very little sense to Josh even after what he had just gone through. “... We could continue your acceleration... but you would likely suffer multiple burst blood vessels in your cerebral cortex and cardiac muscles. This would significantly increase the probability of death, far above the seventy-fifth percentile. Permanent disability would also be guaranteed.” Josh managed a dissatisfied, groaning, “Mwraaaaan...”
Then everything went black.